"Six years! six little years! six drops of time!"
Professor Louis Dyer has devoted some time to preparing a free metrical translation of "Ishtar's Descent." Unfortunately, owing to his many occupations, only the first part of the poem is as yet finished. This he most kindly has placed at our disposal, authorizing us to present it to our readers.
ISHTAR IN URUGAL.
Along the gloomy avenue of death To seek the dread abysm of Urugal, In everlasting Dark whence none returns, Ishtar, the Moon-god's daughter, made resolve, And that way, sick with sorrow, turned her face.
A road leads downward, but no road leads back From Darkness' realm. There is Irkalla queen, Named also Ninkigal, mother of pains. Her portals close forever on her guests And exit there is none, but all who enter, To daylight strangers, and of joy unknown, Within her sunless gates restrained must stay. And there the only food vouchsafed is dust, For slime they live on, who on earth have died. Day's golden beam greets none and darkness reigns Where hurtling bat-like forms of feathered men Or human-fashioned birds imprisoned flit. Close and with dust o'erstrewn, the dungeon doors Are held by bolts with gathering mould o'ersealed.
By love distracted, though the queen of love, Pale Ishtar downward flashed toward death's domain, And swift approached these gates of Urugal, Then paused impatient at its portals grim; For love, whose strength no earthly bars restrain, Gives not the key to open Darkness' Doors. By service from all living men made proud, Ishtar brooked not resistance from the dead. She called the jailer, then to anger changed The love that sped her on her breathless way, And from her parted lips incontinent Swept speech that made the unyielding warder quail.
"Quick, turnkey of the pit! swing wide these doors, And fling them swiftly open. Tarry not! For I will pass, even I will enter in. Dare no denial, thou, bar not my way, Else will I burst thy bolts and rend thy gates, This lintel shatter else and wreck these doors. The pent-up dead I else will loose, and lead Back the departed to the lands they left, Else bid the famished dwellers in the pit Rise up to live and eat their fill once more. Dead myriads then shall burden groaning earth, Sore tasked without them by her living throngs."