Was wasting on the bed of sickness, pent within her house, a thin
veil o'ershadowing her head of golden hair. And this is the third
day I hear that she hath closed her lovely lips and denied her chaste
body all sustenance, eager to hide her suffering and reach death's
cheerless bourn.
(strophe 2)
Maiden, thou must be possessed, by Pan made frantic or by Hecate,
or by the Corybantes dread, and Cybele the mountain mother. Or maybe
thou hast sinned against Dictynna, huntress-queen, and art wasting
for thy guilt in sacrifice unoffered. For she doth range o'er lakes'
expanse and past the bounds of earth upon the ocean's tossing billows.
(antistrophe 2)
Or doth some rival in thy house beguile thy lord, the captain of
Erechtheus' sons, that hero nobly born, to secret amours hid from
thee? Or hath some mariner sailing hither from Crete reached this
port that sailors love, with evil tidings for our queen, and she with
sorrow for her grievous fate is to her bed confined?
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