Page:Divine Comedy (Longfellow 1867) v1.djvu/204



WAS at the time when Juno was enraged,

For Semele, against the Theban blood,

As she already more than once had shown,

So reft of reason Athamas became,

That, seeing his own wife with children twain

Walking encumbered upon either hand,

He cried: "Spread out the nets, that I may take

The lioness and her whelps upon the passage";

And then extended his unpitying claws,

Seizing the first, who had the name Learchus,

And whirled him round, and dashed him on a rock;

And she, with the other burthen, drowned herself;—

And at the time when fortune downward hurled

The Trojans' arrogance, that all things dared,

So that the king was with his kingdom crushed,

Hecuba sad, disconsolate, and captive,

When lifeless she beheld Polyxena,

And of her Polydorus on the shore