"Now Athamas cries out, his reason fled,
`Here, fellow-hunters, let the toils be spread.
I saw a lioness, in quest of food,
With her two young, run roaring in this wood.'
Again the fancied savages were seen,
As thro' his palace still he chased his queen;
Then tore Learchus from her breast: the child
Streched little arms, and on its father smiled, --
A father now no more, -- who now begun
Around his head to whirl his giddy son,
And, quite insensible to nature's call,
The helpless infant flung against the wall.
The same mad poison in the mother wrought;
Young Melicerta in her arms she caught,
And with disordered tresses, howling, flies,
`O Bacchus, Evoe, Bacchus!' loud she cries.
The name of Bacchus Juno laughed to hear,
And said, `Thy foster-god has cost thee dear.'
A rock there stood, whose side the beating waves
Had long consumed, and hollowed into caves.
The head shot forwards in a bending steep,
And cast a dreadful covert o'er the deep.
The wretched Ino, on destruction bent,
Climbed up the cliff, -- such strength her fury lent:
Thence with her guiltless boy, who wept in vain,
At one bold spring she plunged into the main."
"When on the banks her son in ghastly hue
Transfixed with Thracian arrows strikes her view,
The matrons shrieked; her big swoln grief surpassed
The power of utterance; she stood aghast;
She had nor speech, nor tears to give relief:
Excess of woe suppressed the rising grief.
Lifeless as stone, on earth she fix'd her eyes;
And then look'd up to Heav'n with wild surprise,
Now she contemplates o'er with sad delight
Her son's pale visage; then her aking sight
Dwells on his wounds: she varies thus by turns,
Till with collected rage at length she burns,
Wild as the mother-lion, when among
The haunts of prey she seeks her ravished young:
Swift flies the ravisher; she marks his trace,
And by the print directs her anxious chase.
So Hecuba with mingled grief and rage
Pursues the king, regardless of her age.
Fastens her forky fingers in his eyes;
Tears out the rooted balls; her rage pursues,
And in the hollow orbs her hand imbrues.
"The Thracians, fired at this inhuman scene,
With darts and stones assail the frantic queen.
She snarls and growls, nor in an human tone;
Then bites impatient at the bounding stone;
Extends her jaws, as she her voice would raise
To keen invectives in her wonted phrase;
But barks, and thence the yelping brute betrays."
"He that the gliding rivers erst had seen
Adown their verdant channels gently rolled,
Or falling streams, which to the valleys green,
Distilled from tops of Alpine mountains cold,
Those he desired in vain, new torments been
Augumented thus with wish of comforts old;
Those waters cool he drank in vain conceit,
Which more increased his thirst, increased his heat."
"The castle of Romena, mentioned in these verses, now stands in ruins on a precipice about a mile from our inn, and not far off is a spring which the peasants call Fonte Branda. Might I presume to differ from his commentators, Dante, in my opinion, does not mean the great fountain of Siena, but rather this obscure spring; which, though less known to the world, was an object more familiar to the poet himself, who took refuge here from proscription, and an image more natural to the coiner who was burnt on the spot."
Ampère is of the same opinion, Voyage Dantesque, 246: "The Fonte Branda, mentioned by Master Adam, is assuredly the fountain thus named, which still flows not far from the tower of Romena, between the place of the crime and that of its punishment."
On the other hand, Mr. Barlow, Contributions, remarks: "This little fount was known only to so few, that Dante, who wrote for the Italian people generally, can scarcely be thought to have meant this, when the famous Fonte Branda at Siena was, at least by name, familiar to them all, and formed an image more in character with the insatiable thirst of Master Adam."
Poetically the question is of slight importance; for, as Fluellen says, "There is a river in Macedon, and there is also moreover a river at Monmount,.....and there is salmons in both."
"This well is surrounded by a high wall, and the wall by a vast trench; the circuit of the trench is twenty-two miles, and that of the wall eleven miles. Now the outward trench of the walls of Rome (whether real or imaginary we say not) was reckoned by Dante's contemporaries to be exactly twenty-two miles; and the walls of the city were then, and still are, eleven miles round. Hence it is clear, that the wicked time which looks into Rome, as into a mirror, sees there the corrupt place which is the final goal to its waters or people, that is, the figurative Rome, `dread seat of Dis.'"
The trench here spoken of is the last trench of Malebolge. Dante mentions no wall about the well; only giants standiing round it like towers.
Chaucer, Nonnes Preestes Tale: --
"O false dissimilour, O Greek Sinon,
That broughtest Troye at utterly to sorwe."
"A fountain in a darksome wood,
Nor stained with falling leaves nor rising mud."