Epithalamium Achillis et Deidameiae

EPITHALAMIUS OF ACHILLES AND DEIDAMEIA

MYRSON Will you now sing me, Lycidas, some sweet Sicilian strain, lovely, honey-hearted, amorous, such as the Cyclops Polyphemus sang to Galatea by the shore?

LYCIDAS I too, Myrson, am glad to pipe; but what shall I sing?

MYRSON The Scyrian love, Lycidas, the sweet love men envied, the secret kisses of the son of Peleus, the secret bed, how the boy put on a robe, and how he belied his form, and how among the daughters of Lycomedes, heedless, Deidameia came to know Achilles within the bridal chamber.

LYCIDAS Once the herdsman carried off Helen, and led her to Ida, a bitter grief to Oenone. And Lacedaemon was wroth, and gathered all the Achaean host, and no Greek, neither of the Mycenaeans nor of Elis nor of the Laconians, stayed at home in his hall, fleeing wretched war. But hidden among the daughters of Lycomedes was Achilles alone, and instead of arms he was learning to handle wool, and in his white hand he held a maiden's task, and seemed like a girl; for he made himself womanly as they were, and so great a bloom flushed his snowy cheeks, and with the gait of a maiden he walked, and covered his hair with a veil. But the heart of a man he had, and the love of a man he had; and from dawn to night he would sit beside Deidameia, and at times he kissed her hand, and often he lifted up her fair warp-thread, and praised her intricate webs; and he ate with no other companion, and did all things hastening toward their shared sleep. He spoke this word too to her: "The other sisters slumber with one another, but I sleep alone, and you, maiden, sleep alone. We two girls, companions of one age, we two fair ones, yet alone in our beds we sleep; but the wicked, the crafty Nysaea cruelly divides me from you. For I do not ... of you ..."

[The poem breaks off here.]