Kent-Drury
English 206
Quotations--Midterm

...longing/To ease her grief with comfort, to say something/To turn her pain and hurt away, sighs often, /His heart being moved by this great love, most deeply,/And still--the gods give orders, he obeys them; /He goes back to the fleet.
...one of your men/Lies on the shore, unburied, a pollution/To all the fleet, while you have come for counsel/Here to our threshold. Bury him with honor;/Black cattle slain in expiation for him/Must fall before you see the Stygian kingdoms,/The groves denied to living men.
...she drew her knife,/Cut Aeson's wrinkled throat, and let the blood/Run out, all the old blood runout, and filled/The veings with the new mixture. Aeson drank it /With his own mouth, and through his wound, and strangely,/Strangely, and quickly, his beard was black again,/No longer gray, his flesh filled out, the waxen/Complexion changed, the wrinkles all smoothed over,/He walked as young men walk...
...the queen, unmoving /As flint or marble, turned away, her eyes/Fixed on the ground: the tears were vain, the words,/Meant to be soothing, foolish; she turnred away,/His enemy forever, to the shadows/Where Sychaeus, her former husband, took her/With love for love, and sorrow for her sorrow.
...there came a pair of serpents/With monstrous coils, breasting the sea, and aiming/Together for the shore. Their heads and shoulders/Rose over the waves, upright, with bloody crests...they went on straight for Laocoön...
[he]held out his arms /to take his baby. But the child squirmed round/on the nurse's bosom and began to wail,/terrified by his father's great war helm--/the flashing bronze, the crest with horsehair plume/tossed like a living thing at every nod.
Are you crazy, wretched people?/Do you think that any/Gifts of teh Greeks lack treachery? Ulysses--/What was his reputation?
As ravenous wolves come down on lambs and kids/astray from some flock that in hilly country/splits in two by a shepherd's negligence,/and quickly wolves bear off the defenseless things,/so when Danáäns fell on Trojans, shrieking/flight was all they thought of, not of combat.
As she turned,/She springkled her with hell-bane, and her hair/Fell off, and nose and ears felloff, and head/Was shrunken, and the body very tiney,/Nothing but belly, with little fingers clinging/Along the side as legs, but from the belly/She still kept spinning; the spider has not forgotten/The arts she used to practice.
Before the entrance, at the very threshold/Stood Pyrrhus, flashing proudly in bronze light,/Sleek as a serpent coming into the open,/Fed on rank herbs, wintering under the ground,/The old slough cast, the new skin shining, roling/His slippery length, reaching his neck to the sun,/While the forked tongue darts from the mouth.
Brother dear--/dear to a whore, a nightmare of a woman!/...You are the one afflicted most/by harlotry in me and by his madness,/our portion, all of misery, given by Zeus/that we may live in song for men to come.
But when, for the fourth time, they reached the springs, /the Father poised his golden scales./He placed/two shapes of death, death prone and cold upon them,/one of Akhilleus, one of the horseman, Hektor,/and held the midpoint, pulling upward./Down sank Hektor's fatal day, the pan went down/toward undergloom, and Phoibos Apollo left him.
Do I sail away, then, leave my sister here,/My father, brother, native gods and country?/My father, though, is a savage, and my land/Is barbarous, and my brother is a baby, /My sister is on my side; as for the gods,/The greatest god is the one in my own spirit! /I shall not leave great things, but go to meet them: /Great things--a savior's title, and the knowledge /Of better soil than ours, cities whose fame/Thrives even here, civilization, culture/And one thing more...
Each sister struck with perverse devotion; never a one /Could watch the blow strike home; each turned her eyes;/Blind girls with cruel hands, they struck, and, bleeding,/He had strength enough to raise himself a little,/To try to leave the bed. "What are you doing, /Daughters?" he cried, "What arms you to this purpose, /A father's murder?" All their strength and spirit/Failed them...
Fear not, my daughter; fate remains unmoved/For the Roman generations. You will witness/Lavinium's rise, her walls fulfill the promise
God, what a nimble fellow,somersaulting!/If he were out at sea in the fishing grounds/this man could feed a crew, diving for oysters,/going overboard even in rough water,/the way he took that earth-dive from his car./The Trojans have their acrobats I see.
He dragged the old man, trembling, to the altar,/Slipping in his son's blood; he grabbed his hair/With the left hand, and the right drove home the sword,/Deep in the side, to the hilt.
He saw Greeks,/Hard-pressed, in flight, and Trojans coming after,/Or, on another panel, the scene reversed,/Achilles in pursuit, his own men fleeing;/He saw, and tears came into his eyes again,/The tents of Rhesus, snowy -white, betrayed /In their first sleep by bloody Diomedes /With many a death.
Help me, O Muse, recall the reasons: why,/Why did the queen of heaven drive a man/So known for goodness, for devotiion, through/So many toils and perils?/Was there slight,/Affront or outrage? Is vindictiveness/An attribute of the celestial mind?
I will not share one word of counsel with him,/nor will I act with him; he robbed me blind,/broke faith with me: he gets no second chance/to play me for a fool./Once is enough. /To hell with him, Zeus took his brains away!/His gifts I abominate , and I would give/not one dry shuck for him.
In a dark tree there hides/A bough, all golden, leaf and pliant stem,/Sacred to Prosperine, This all the grove/Protects, and shadows cover it with darkness. /Until this bough, this bloom of light is found,/No one receives his passport to the darkness/Whose queen requires this tribute.
No, no, we joined for you, you insolent boor,/to please you, fighting for your brother's sake/and yours, to get revenge upon the Trojans./You overlook this, dogface, or don't care, and now in the end you threaten to take my girl, /a prize I sweated for, and soldiers gave me!.../Sack of wine, you with your cur's eyes and your antelope heart!/...Leech!/Commander of trash!
Rumor goes flying/At once, through all the Libyan cities, Rumor/Than whom no other evil was ever swifter./She thrives on motion and her own momentum;/Tiny at first in fear, she swells, colossal/In no time, walks on earth, but her head is hidden/Among the clouds
The answer/Came to her as her son came in, young Itys./She looked at him with pitiless eyes;she thought/How like his father he is! That was enough, /She knew, now, what she had to do, all burning /With rage inside her, but when the little fellow/Came close and put both arms around his mother, /And kissed her in appealing boyish fashion/She was moved to tenderness...
These are spirits, ready/Once more for life; they drink of Lethe's water/The soothing potion of forgetfulness./I have longed, for long, to show them to you, name them,/Our children's children; Italy discovered,/So much the greater happiness, my son.
They dredge harbors,/Set cornerstones, quarry the rock, where someday/Their theater will tower. They are like bees/In early summer over the country flowers/When the sun is warm, and the young of teh hive emerge,/And they pack the molten honey, bulge the cells/With the sweet nectar, add new loads, and harry /The drones away from the hive, and the work glows,/And the air is sweet with bergamot and clover.
They went flying from him/As if they were on wings. They were on wings! /One flew to the woods, the other to the roof-top,/And even so the red marks of the murder /Stayed on their breasts; the feathers were blood-colored.
They wove its sides with planks of fir, pretending/This was an offering for their safe return,/At least, so rumor had it. But inside/They packed, in secret, into the hollow sides/The fittest warriors; the belly's cavern,/Huge as it was, was filled with men in armor.
Upon this altar we'll make offering/of twelve young heifers never scarred!/Only show mercy to our town,/mercy to Trojan men, their wives and children."/These were Theanó's prayers, her vain prayers,/Pallas Athêna turned away her head.
When parayers were said and grains of barley strewn,/they held the bullocks for the knife, and flayed them,/cutting out joints and wrapping these in fat,/two layers, folded, with raw strips of flesh,/for the old man to burn on cloven faggots,/wetting it all with wine.
Who is it this time, schemer? Who has your ear?/How fond you are of secret plans, of taking/decisions privately! You could not bring yourself,/could you, to favor me with any word /of your new plot?
With a great cry he turns the table over,/Summons the snaky Furies from their valley/Deep in the pit of Styx. Now, if he could, /If he only could, he would open up his belly,/Eject the terrible feast: all he can do /Is weep, call himself the pitiful resting-place/Of his dear son.