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From ‘Empedocles on Etna’, Act I.
FAR, far from here, | |
| The Adriatic breaks in a warm bay | |
| Among the green Illyrian hills; and there | |
| The sunshine in the happy glens is fair, | |
| And by the sea, and in the brakes. | 5 |
| The grass is cool, the sea-side air | |
| Buoyant and fresh, the mountain flowers | |
| As virginal and sweet as ours. | |
| And there, they say, two bright and agèd snakes, | |
| Who once were Cadmus and Harmonia, | 10 |
| Bask in the glens or on the warm sea-shore, | |
| In breathless quiet, after all their ills. | |
| Nor do they see their country, nor the place | |
| Where the Sphinx lived among the frowning hills, | |
| Nor the unhappy palace of their race, | 15 |
| Nor Thebes, nor the Ismenus, any more. | |
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| There those two live, far in the Illyrian brakes. | |
| They had stay’d long enough to see, | |
| In Thebes, the billow of calamity | |
| Over their own dear children roll’d, | 20 |
| Curse upon curse, pang upon pang, | |
| For years, they sitting helpless in their home, | |
| A grey old man and woman; yet of old | |
| The Gods had to their marriage come, | |
| And at the banquet all the Muses sang. | 25 |
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| Therefore they did not end their days | |
| In sight of blood; but were rapt, far away, | |
| To where the west wind plays, | |
| And murmurs of the Adriatic come | |
| To those untrodden mountain lawns; and there | 30 |
| Placed safely in changed forms, the Pair | |
| Wholly forget their first sad life, and home, | |
| And all that Theban woe, and stray | |
| For ever through the glens, placid and dumb. | |
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