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Tag: Hades / king of the Underworld
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Thus entring into destiny, the maid
The secrets of offended Jove betray’d:
especially Hades, Jove’s brother,
had prophesied that Apollo‘s child
with Coronis would be an acclaimed
healer, thus defraud[ing] the tomb,
thereby saving people from the
clutches of Hades, the especially
aggrieved god
More had she still to say; but now appears
Oppress’d with sobs and sighs, and drown’d in tears.
Occhyroe would have had more
to prophesy, but was impeded by
involuntary physical spasms
“My voice,” says she, “is gone, my language fails;
Through ev’ry limb my kindred shape prevails:
kindred shape, the bodily
characteristics of her father,
her kin, the centaur Chiron
Why did the God this fatal gift impart,
And with prophetick raptures swell my heart!
prophetick raptures, Occhyroe, who
had inherited through her father,
Chiron, who had himself received
it from Apollo, his own father, the
gift of divination, for better, for
either, we’ll learn, or for worse
What new desires are these? I long to pace
O’er flow’ry meadows, and to feed on grass;
I hasten to a brute, a maid no more;
what’s happening, What new desires
are these?, Occhyroe cries, or nearly
neighs, rather, at this point, I’m
becoming a brute, she groans, an
animal, a maid, no more, she objects
But why, alas! am I transform’d all o’er?
My sire does half a human shape retain,
And in his upper parts preserve the man.”
why, Occhyroe asks, since my
father, Chiron, is partially a man,
am I transform’d all o’er?, why
is there nothing left of me that
is human
Her tongue no more distinct complaints affords,
distinct, clear, easy to decipher
affords, allows, permits
But in shrill accents and mis-shapen words
Pours forth such hideous wailings, as declare
The human form confounded in the mare:
Occhyroe has become a horse,
the proof is in her braying
‘Till by degrees accomplish’d in the beast,
She neigh’d outright, and all the steed exprest.
all the steed exprest, was
everywhere the very picture
of a horse
Her stooping body on her hands is born,
born, borne, carried
Her hands are turn’d to hoofs, and shod in horn,
Her yellow tresses ruffle in a mane,
And in a flowing tail she frisks her train,
The mare was finish’d in her voice and look,
And a new name from the new figure took.
Occhyroe can no longer be called
Occhyroe, she is no longer she,
but a new figure, needing to be
identified as something else
R ! chard
________
Old Chiron took the babe with secret joy,
Proud of the charge of the celestial boy.
His daughter too, whom on the sandy shore
The nymph Charicle to the centaur bore,
With hair dishevel’d on her shoulders, came
To see the child, Ocyrrhoe was her name;
nymph Charicle, c[o]me …[t]o see
the child
With hair dishevel’d on her shoulders,
there’s a suggestion here, regarding
Charicle, of madness, or possession
the child, the babe, the celestial boy,
the infant, ript, by its very father,
Apollo, from his unfaithful lover,
its, or his, care
She knew her father’s arts, and could rehearse
The depths of prophecy in sounding verse.
it appears that Ocyrrhoe, daughter of
a poetess, was possessed, on her
father’s side, of poetry, could reveal,
decipher, or rehearse / The depths
of prophecy, in sounding verse, was
able, as wordmongers sometimes do,
to tell truth, deliver, in rhyme, incisive
evaluations
Once, as the sacred infant she survey’d,
the sacred infant, the child born of
The God was kindled in the raving maid,
The God, the child, the sacred infant,
by virtue of being half, if only half,
divine, having been fathered by the
kindled, inspired
the raving maid, Ocyrrhoe, beset by
neurotic, irrational, though prophetic,
it is proposed, powers
And thus she utter’d her prophetick tale:
“Hail, great physician of the world, all-hail;
great physician of the world, the fated
become a healer of legend
Hail, mighty infant, who in years to come
Shalt heal the nations, and defraud the tomb;
defraud the tomb, recall from the
hereafter, resuscitate, revive,
return to life
Swift be thy growth! thy triumphs unconfin’d!
Make kingdoms thicker, and increase mankind.
thicker, more populated
Thy daring art shall animate the dead,
Thy daring art, medicine, the mighty
infant will eventually be recognized
as a celebrated man of healing
And draw the thunder on thy guilty head:
guilty head, when Hades, king of the
brother, that the mighty infant was
stealing his subjects, the departed,
Zeus shot the great physician down,
acknowledging the healer’s guilt, of
his defraud[ing] the tomb, condemning
the culprit with a punishing, an
annihilating, thunderbolt
Then shalt thou dye, but from the dark abode
Rise up victorious, and be twice a God.
Apollo, aggrieved, had had his son,
the child, the sacred infant, reinstated,
after tortuous ministrations, as an
immortal god, an entirely, however,
other story
And thou, my sire, not destin’d by thy birth
To turn to dust, and mix with common earth,
How wilt thou toss, and rave, and long to dye,
And quit thy claim to immortality;
When thou shalt feel, enrag’d with inward pains,
The Hydra’s venom rankling in thy veins?
the child, the sire, not destin’d by [its] birth
/ To turn to dust, which is to say, to be no
longer mortal but immortal, how will it, not
wanting particularly to survive, quit [its]
claim to immortality, deal with the
impossibility of dying, [w]hen [it] shal[l]
feel, enrag’d with inward pains, agonies,
that compel it to seek personal annihilation
Hydra, a snakelike monster with many
heads, whose venom and very breath
were poisonous, stationed at one of
The Gods, in pity, shall contract thy date,
And give thee over to the pow’r of Fate.”
contract thy date, make mortal,
subject once again to Fate
R ! chard
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