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From the throat of the monster, the portent accurst, that so it might doom

For Alkimedê sorrow and griefs untold in the days to come.’

So ’mid the moan of the women marched the heroes along.{260}

And by this were the thralls and the handmaids gathered in one great throng.

Then fell on his neck his mother, and sharply the anguish-thorn

Pierced each soft breast, the while his father, the eld-forlorn,

Close-swathed as a corpse on his bed, lay groaning and groaning again.

But the hero essayed to hush their laments and assuage their pain

With words of cheer, and he spake, ‘Take up my war-array,’

To the thralls, and with downcast eyes did these in silence obey.

But his mother, as round her child her arms at the first she had flung,

So clave she, and wept without stint: as the motherless maiden she clung,

Whose forlorn little arms clasp fondly her grey old nurse, when the tide{270}

Cometh up of her woe:—she hath no one to love her nor comfort beside;

And a weary lot is hers ’neath a stepdame’s tyrannous sway,