Notes About The Poem
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Euripides: Ode to Eros
Eros, Eros, sweetly despoiling
human hearts with your passionate fire,
never, never may you invade me
with so destructive a flood of desire.
Mightier, mightier than any gleaming
starlight endlessly piercing night’s radiance,
stronger than torches that paint the dark with flame,
flies the fatal shaft of the Love God,
child of all-seeing Zeus on Olympus
and Aphrodite: it strikes with deadly aim.
Vainly, vainly famous Olympia
and Delphi’s holy oracular shrine
richly, richly garner their harvest
of sacrifice and libations of wine:
O my country, why do you never
make oblation in honor of Eros,
born of the Love Queen to rule the minds of all?
Eros, guardian of Aphrodite’s
sacred chamber is mightier than armies:
he is the conqueror whose power makes cities fall.
Aphrodite kindled in Helen
a passion stronger than duty or shame:
Priam’s city, ancient and splendid,
is nothing now but a song and a name.
Death and terror, fire and destruction
blossomed forth from her heartbreaking loveliness,
leaving Troy’s citadel ashes soaked with blood.
Dreadful, dreadful comes Aphrodite,
whirling all in her devastating hurricane,
quick as a honeybee that seeks a springtime bud.
Translated from the Greek by Jon Corelis
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