Читать книгу The Seven Sisters of Sleep. Popular History of the Seven Prevailing Narcotics of the World онлайн

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Homer also makes Helen administer to Telemachus, in the house of Menelaus, a potion prepared from nepenthes, which made him forget his sorrows.

“Meanwhile with genial joy to warm the soul,

Bright Helen mix’d a mirth-inspiring bowl;

Temper’d with drugs of sovereign use to assuage

The boiling bosom of tumultuous rage;

To clear the cloudy front of wrinkled care,

And dry the tearful sluices of despair;

Charm’d with that virtuous draught, the exalted mind

All sense of woe delivers to the wind:

Though on the blazing pile his parent lay,

Or a loved brother groan’d his life away,

Or darling son, oppress’d by ruffian force,

Fell breathless at its feet a mangled corse;

From morn to eve, impassive and serene

The man entranced would view the deathful scene.

These drugs, so friendly to the joys of life,

Bright Helen learn’d from Thone’s imperial wife,

Who sway’d the sceptre where prolific Nile

With various simples clothes the fatten’d soil.

With wholesome herbage mixed, the direful bane

Of vegetable venom taints the plain;