by T. S. Eliot
lieving troops, and by the victory had a great name. And since he was
strong in wealth and in men, and traced his descent, as it happened,
from Gradivus, Pandion, king of Athens, allied him to himself by wed-
ding him to [his daughter] Procne. But neither Juno, bridal goddess,
nor Hymen, nor the Graces were present at that wedding. The Furies
lighted them with torches stolen from a funeral; the Furies spread
the couch, and the uncanny screech-owl brooded and sat on the roof
of their chamber. Under this omen were Procne and Tereus wedded;
under this omen was their child conceived. Thrace, indeed, rejoiced
with them, and they themselves gave thanks to the gods; both the day
on which Pandion’s daughter was married to their illustrious king, and
that day on which Itys was born, they made a festival: even so is our
true advantage hidden.
Now Titan through five autumnal seasons had brought round the
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revolving years, when Procne coaxingly to her husband said: “If I have
found any favour in your sight, either send me to visit my sister or let
my sister come to me. You will promise my father that after a brief stay
she shall return. If you give me a chance to see my sister you will confer
on me a precious boon.” Tereus accordingly bade them launch his ship,
and plying oar and sail, he entered the Cecropian harbour and came to
land on the shore of Piraeus [the port of Athens]. As soon as he came
into the presence of his father-in-law they joined right hands, and the
talk began with good wishes for their health. He had begun to tell of his
wife’s request, which was the cause of his coming, and to promise a
speedy return should the sister be sent home with him, when lo! Philo-
mela entered, attired in rich apparel, but richer still in beauty; such as
we are wont to hear the naiads described, and dryads when they move
about in the deep woods, if only one should give to them refinement
and apparel like hers. The moment he saw the maiden Tereus was
inflamed with love, quick as if one should set fire to ripe grain, or dry
leaves, or hay stored away in the mow. Her beauty, indeed, was worth it;
but in his case his own passionate nature pricked him on, and, besides,
the men of his clime are quick to love: his own fire and his nation’s
burnt in him. His impulse was to corrupt her attendants’ care and her
nurse’s faithfulness, and even by rich gifts to tempt the girl herself, even
at the cost of all his kingdom; or else to ravish her and to defend his
act by bloody war. There was nothing which he would not do or dare,
smitten by this mad passion. His heart could scarce contain the fires
that burnt in it. Now, impatient of delay, he eagerly repeated Procne’s
request, pleading his own cause under her name. Love made him elo-
quent, and as often as he asked more urgently than he should, he would
say that Procne wished it so. He even added tears to his entreaties, as
though she had bidden him to do this too. Ye gods, what blind night
rules in the hearts of men! In the very act of pushing on his shameful
plan Tereus gets credit for a kind heart and wins praise from wicked-
ness. Ay, more—Philomela herself has the same wish; winding her
arms about her father’s neck, she coaxes him to let her visit her sister;
by her own welfare (yes, and against it, too), she urges her prayer.
Tereus gazes at her, and as he looks feels her already in his arms; as he
sees her kisses and her arms about her father’s neck, all this goads him
on, food and fuel for his passion; and whenever she embraces her father
he wishes that he were in the father’s place—indeed, if he were, his in-
tent would be no less impious. The father yields to the prayers of both.
The girl is filled with joy; she thanks her father and, poor unhappy
wretch, she deems that success for both sisters which is to prove a woe-
ful happening for them both.
Now Phoebus’ toils were almost done and his horses were pacing
down the western sky. A royal feast was spread, wine in cups of gold.
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Then they lay them down to peaceful slumber. But although the Thra-
cian king retired, his heart seethes with thoughts of her. Recalling her
look, her movement, her hands, he pictures at will what he has not yet
seen, and feeds his own fires, his thoughts preventing sleep. Morning
came; and Pandion, wringing his son-in-law’s hand as he was departing,
consigned his daughter to him with many tears and said: “Dear son,
since a natural plea has won me, and both my daughters have wished it,
and you also have wished it, my Tereus, I give her to your keeping; and
by your honour and the ties that bind us, by the gods, I pray you guard
her with a father’s love, and as soon as possible—it will seem a long time
in any case to me—send back to me this sweet solace of my tedious years.
And do you, my Philomela, if you love me, come back to me as soon as
possible; it is enough that your sister is so far away.” Thus he made his
last requests and kissed his child good-bye, and gentle tears fell as he
spoke the words; and he asked both their right hands as pledge of their
promise, and joined them together and begged that they would remember
to greet for him his daughter and her son. His voice broke with sobs,
he could hardly say farewell, as he feared the forebodings of his mind.
As soon as Philomela was safely embarked upon the painted ship
and the sea was churned beneath the oars and the land was left behind,
Tereus exclaimed: “I have won! in my ship I carry the fulfilment of my
prayers!” The barbarous fellow triumphs, he can scarce postpone his
joys, and never turns his eyes from her, as when the ravenous bird of
Jove [the eagle] has dropped in his high eyrie some hare caught in his
hooked talons; the captive has no chance to escape, the captor gloats
over his prize.
And now they were at the end of their journey, now, leaving the
travel-worn ship, they had landed on their own shores; when the king
dragged o¤ Pandion’s daughter to a hut deep in the ancient woods; and
there, pale and trembling and all fear, begging with tears to know where
her sister was, he shut her up. Then, openly confessing his horrid pur-
pose, he violated her, just a weak girl and all alone, vainly calling, often
on her father, often on her sister, but most of all upon the great gods.
She trembled like a frightened lamb, which, torn and cast aside by a
grey wolf, cannot yet believe that it is safe; and like a dove which, with
its own blood all smeared over its plumage, still palpitates with fright,
still fears those greedy claws that have pierced it. Soon, when her senses
came back, she dragged at her loosened hair, and like one in mourning,
beating and tearing her arms, with outstretched hands she cried: “Oh,
what a horrible thing you have done, barbarous, cruel wretch! Do you
care nothing for my father’s injunctions, his a¤ectionate tears, my sis-
ter’s lov
e, my own virginity, the bonds of wedlock? You have confused all
natural relations: I have become a concubine, my sister’s rival; you, a
husband to both. Now Procne must be my enemy. Why do you not take
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my life, that no crime may be left undone, you traitor? Aye, would that
you had killed me before you wronged me so. Then would my shade
have been innocent and clean. If those who dwell on high see these
things, nay, if there are any gods at all, if all things have not perished
with me, sooner or later you shall pay dearly for this deed. I will myself
cast shame aside and proclaim what you have done. If I should have the
chance, I would go where people throng and tell it; if I am kept shut up
in these woods, I will fill the woods with my story and move the very
rocks to pity. The air of heaven shall hear it, and, if there is any god in
heaven, he shall hear it too.”
The savage tyrant’s wrath was aroused by these words, and his fear
no less. Pricked on by both these spurs, he drew his sword, which was
hanging by his side in its sheath, caught her by the hair, and twisting
her arms behind her back, he bound them fast. At sight of the sword
Philomela gladly o¤ered her throat to the stroke, filled with the eager
hope of death. But he seized her tongue with pincers, as it protested
against the outrage, calling ever on the name of her father and strug-
gling to speak, and cut it o¤ with his merciless blade. The mangled root
quivers, while the severed tongue lies palpitating on the dark earth,
faintly murmuring; and, as the severed tail of a mangled snake is wont
to writhe, it twitches convulsively, and with its last dying movement it
seeks its mistress’s feet. Even after this horrid deed—one would scarce
believe it—the monarch is said to have worked his lustful will again
and again upon the poor mangled form.
With such crimes upon his soul he had the face to return to Procne’s
presence. She on seeing him at once asked where her sister was. He
groaned in pretended grief and told a made-up story of death; his tears
gave credence to the tale. Then Procne tore from her shoulders the robe
gleaming with a golden border and put on black weeds; she built also a
cenotaph in honour of her sister, brought pious o¤erings to her imag-
ined spirit, and mourned her sister’s fate, not meet so to be mourned.
Now through the twelve signs, a whole year’s journey, has the sun-
god passed. And what shall Philomela do? A guard prevents her flight;
stout walls of solid stone fence in the hut; speechless lips can give no
token of her wrongs. But grief has sharp wits, and in trouble cunning
comes. She hangs a Thracian web on her loom, and skilfully weaving
purple signs on a white background, she thus tells the story of her
wrongs. This web, when completed, she gives to her one attendant and
begs her with gestures to carry it to the queen. The old woman, as she
was bid, takes the web to Procne, not knowing what she bears in it. The
savage tyrant’s wife unrolls the cloth, reads the pitiable tale of her mis-
fortune, and (a miracle that she could!) says not a word. Grief chokes
the words that rise to her lips, and her questing tongue can find no
words strong enough to express her outraged feelings. Here is no room
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for tears, but she hurries on to confound right and wrong, her whole
soul bent on the thought of vengeance.
It was the time when the Thracian matrons were wont to celebrate
the biennial festival of Bacchus [god of wine]. Night was in their secret;
by night Mount Rhodope would resound with the shrill clash of brazen
cymbals; so by night the queen goes forth from her house, equips
herself for the rites of the god and dons the array of frenzy; her head
was wreathed with trailing vines, a deer-skin hung from her left side,
a light spear rested on her shoulder. Swift she goes through the woods
with an attendant throng of her companions, and driven on by the mad-
ness of grief, Procne, terrific in her rage, mimics thy madness, O Bac-
chus! She comes to the secluded lodge at last, shrieks aloud and cries
“Euhoe!” breaks down the doors, seizes her sister, arrays her in the trap-
pings of a Bacchante, hides her face with ivy-leaves, and, dragging her
along in amazement, leads her within her own walls.
When Philomela perceived that she had entered that accursed house
the poor girl shook with horror and grew pale as death. Procne found
a place, and took o¤ the trappings of the Bacchic rites and, uncovering
the shame-blanched face of her wretched sister, folded her in her arms.
But Philomela could not lift her eyes to her sister, feeling herself to have
wronged her. And, with her face turned to the ground, longing to swear
and call all the gods to witness that that shame had been forced upon
her, she made her hand serve for voice. But Procne was all on fire, could
not contain her own wrath, and chiding her sister’s weeping, she said:
“This is no time for tears, but for the sword, for something stronger
than the sword, if you have such a thing. I am prepared for any crime,
my sister; either to fire this palace with a torch, and to cast Tereus, the
author of our wrongs, into the flaming ruins, or to cut out his tongue
and his eyes, to cut o¤ the parts which brought shame to you, and drive
his guilty soul out through a thousand wounds. I am prepared for some
great deed; but what it shall be I am still in doubt.”
While Procne was thus speaking Itys came into his mother’s pres-
ence. His coming suggested what she could do, and regarding him with
pitiless eyes, she said: “Ah, how like your father you are!” Saying no
more, she began to plan out a terrible deed and boiled with inward rage.
But when the boy came up to her and greeted his mother, put his little
arms around her neck and kissed her in his winsome, boyish way, her
mother-heart was touched, her wrath fell away, and her eyes, though all
unwilling, were wet with tears that flowed in spite of her. But when she
perceived that her purpose was wavering through excess of mother-love,
she turned again from her son to her sister; and gazing at both in turn,
she said: “Why is one able to make soft, pretty speeches, while her rav-
ished tongue dooms the other to silence? Since he calls me mother, why
does she not call me sister? Remember whose wife you are, daughter
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of Pandion! Will you be faithless to your husband? But faithfulness to
such a husband as Tereus is a crime.” Without more words she dragged
Itys away, as a tigress drags a suckling fawn through the dark woods
on Ganges’ banks. And when they reached a remote part of the great
house, while the boy stretched out pleading hands as he saw his fate,
and screamed, “Mother! mother!” and sought to throw his arms around
her neck, Procne smote him with a knife between breast and side—
and with no change
of face. This one stroke suªced to slay the lad; but
Philomela cut the throat also, and they cut up the body still warm and
quivering with life. Part bubbles in brazen kettles, part sputters on spits;
while the whole room drips with gore.
This is the feast to which the wife invites Tereus, little knowing what
it is. She pretends that it is a sacred feast after their ancestral fashion, of
which only a husband may partake, and removes all attendants and slaves.
So Tereus, sitting alone in his high ancestral banquet-chair, begins the
feast and gorges himself with flesh of his own flesh. And in the utter
blindness of his understanding he cries; “Go, call me Itys hither!” Procne
cannot hide her cruel joy, and eager to be the messenger of her bloody
news, she says: “You have, within, him whom you want.” He looks
about and asks where the boy is. And then, as he asks and calls again
for his son, just as she was, with streaming hair, and all stained with
her mad deed of blood, Philomela springs forward and hurls the gory
head of Itys straight into his father’s face; nor was there ever any time
when she longed more to be able to speak, and to express her joy in
fitting words. Then the Thracian king overturns the table with a great
cry and invokes the snaky sisters from the Stygian pit. Now, if he could,
he would gladly lay open his breast and take thence the horrid feast and
vomit forth the flesh of his son; now he weeps bitterly and calls himself
his son’s most wretched tomb; then with drawn sword he pursues the
two daughters of Pandion. As they fly away from him you would think
that the bodies of the two Athenians were poised on wings: they were
poised on wings! One flies to the woods, the other rises to the roof. And
even now their breasts have not lost the marks of their murderous deed,
their feathers are stained with blood. Tereus, swift in pursuit because of
his grief and eager desire for vengeance, is himself changed into a bird.
Upon his head a sti¤ crest appears, and a huge beak stands forth instead
of his long sword. He is the hoopoë, with the look of one armed for war.
103 [Jug Jug]: This was a conventional way of representing the nightingale’s song,
as seen in the first four lines of an untitled song which appears in a play by
John Lyly (1553–1606), Alexander and Campaspe (1584), act V, scene i, echoed here and at lines 204–206 by Eliot:
