View source for ''Metamorphoses''

Go back to [["The Fire Sermon" Annotations]]

Ovid
''Metamorphoses''<ref>Ovid, Metamorphosis, trans. Rolfe Humphries (Indiana Univ. Press, 1955), pp. 146-48</ref>


And now the voyage ended, and the vessel

Was worn from travel, and they came stepping down

To their own shores, and Tereus dragged her with him

To the deep woods, to some ramshackle building

Dark in that darkness, and he shut her in there,

Pale, trembling, fearing everything, and asking

"Where was her sister?" And he told her then

What he was going to do, and straightway did it,

Raped her, a virgin all alone, and calling

For her father, for her sister, but most often

For the great gods. In vain. . . .



But Tereus did not kill her; he seized her tongue


With pincers, though it cried against the outrage,

Babbled and made a sound something like "Father,"

Till the sword cut if off. The mangled root

Quivered, the severed tongue along the ground

Lay quivering, making a little murmur,

Jerking and twitching, the way a serpent does

Run over by a wheel, and with its dying movement

Came to its mistress' feet. . . .



And a year went by

And what of Philomela? Guarded against flight,

Stone blocks around her cottage, no power of speech

To help her tell her wrongs, her grief has taught her

Sharpness of wit, and cunning comes in trouble.

She had a loom to work with, and with purple

On a white background, wove her story in,

Her story in and out, and when it was finished,

Gave it to one old woman, with signs and gestures

To take it to the queen, so it was taken,

Unrolled and understood. Procne said nothing--

What could she say?--grief choked her utterance,

Passion her sense of outrage. . . .



<references/>