O unhappy, fall a-weeping, thou unhappy soul, for aye.
For is honour of any semblance, any beauty but of it I?
Who, a woman here, in order was a man, a youth, a boy,
To the sinewy ring a fam'd flower, the gymnasium's applause.
65 With a throng about the portal, with a populace in the gate,
With a flowery coronal hanging upon every column of home,
When anew my chamber open'd, as awoke the sunny morn.
O am I to live the god's slave? feodary be to Cybele?
Or a Maenad I, an eunuch? or a part of a body slain?
70 Or am I to range the green tracts upon Ida snowy-chill?
Be beneath the stately caverns colonnaded of Asia?
Be with hind that haunts the covert, or in hursts that house the boar?
Woe, woe the deed accomplish'd! woe, woe, the shame to me!"
From rosy lips ascending when approached the gusty cry
75 To celestial ears recording such a message inly borne,
Cybele, the thong relaxing from a lion-haled yoke,
Said, aleft the goad addressing to the foe that awes the flocks—
"Come, a service; haste, my brave one; let a fury the madman arm,
Let a fury, a frenzy prick him to return to the wood again,
80 This is he my hest declineth, the unheedy, the runaway.
From an angry tail refuse not to abide the sinewy stroke,
To a roar let all the regions echo answer everywhere,
On a nervy neck be tossing that uneasy tawny mane."
So in ire she spake, adjusting disunitedly then her yoke
85 At his own rebuke the lion doth his heart to a fury spur,
With a step, a roar, a bursting unarrested of any brake.
But anear the foamy places when he came, to the frothy beach,
When he saw the sexless Attis by the seas' level opaline,
Then he rushed upon him; affrighted to the wintery wood he flew,
90 Cybele's for aye, for all years, in her order a votaress.
Holy deity, great Cybele, holy lady Dindymene,
Be to me afar for ever that inordinate agony.
O another hound to madness, O another hurry to rage!