[PHILOMELA][°]
"Philomela unites the sensibilities and intellectual experience of modern Englishmen with the luminousness and simplicity of Greek poetry."—SAINTSBURY.
The myth of the nightingale has long been a favorite with the poets, who have variously interpreted the bird's song. See Coleridge's, Keats's, and Wordsworth's poems on the subject. The most common version of the myth, the one followed by Arnold, is as follows:—
"Pandion (son of Erichthonius, special ward to Minerva) had two daughters, Procne and Philomela, of whom he gave the former in marriage to Tereus, king of Thrace (or of Daulis in Phocis). This ruler, after his wife had borne him a son, Itys (or Itylus), wearied of her, plucked out her tongue by the roots to insure her silence, and, pretending that she was dead, took in marriage the other sister, Philomela. Procne, by means of a web, into which she wove her story, informed Philomela of the horrible truth. In revenge upon Tereus, the sisters killed Itylus, and served up the child as food to the father; but the gods, in indignation, transformed Procne into a swallow, Philomela into a nightingale, forever bemoaning the murdered Itylus, and Tereus into a hawk, forever pursuing the sisters."—GAYLEY'S Classic Myths.
[4.] Use the subjoined questions in studying the poem.
[5.] O wanderer from a Grecian shore. See note, l. [27].
[8.] Note the aptness and beauty of the adjectives in this line, not one of which could be omitted without irreparable loss.
[18.] Thracian wild. Thrace was the name used by the early Greeks for the entire region north of Greece.
[21.] The too clear web, etc. [p.185] See introductory note to poem for explanation of this and the following lines.
[27.] Daulis. A city of Phocis, Greece, twelve miles northeast of Delphi; the scene of the myth of Philomela. Cephessian vale. The valley of the Cephissus, a small stream running through Doris, Phocis, and Boeotia, into the Euboean Gulf.