He wandering far along the lonely main
Soothed with the hollow shell his sickly pain;
Thee, thee, dear wife, he sung forlorn,
From morn to eve, and thee from eve to morn.

He pierced the grove where brooding darkness flings
A cold black horror from his [ ] wings,
To where Hell's King in griesly state appears
And round him hearts unmoved by human tears;
On as he passed and struck the plaintive shell
Ambrosial music filled the ear of hell.
[ ] from the lowest bound
Of Erebus the shadows flocked around,
As birds unnumbered seek their leafy bower,
Driven by the twilight dark, or morning shower,
Boys, men, and matrons old, the tender maid,
And mighty heroes' more majestic shade.

Felt his dear wife the sweet approach of light
Following behind--ah why did Fate impose
This cruel mandate, source of all his woes?
When [ ] a sudden madness stole
His swimming senses from the lover's soul.
The deed might not in vain for pardon sue
If Hell the sweets of gentle pardon knew.
He paused, and treading on the edge of day
Mindless, his parting soul dissolved away,
He turned and gazed. [ ] and thrice a dismal shriek
From Hell's still waters thrice was heard to break.

Then she--'what God our Ruin hath decreed,
And why, my Orpheus, why this desperate deed?
Once more I hear a dreadful voice, it cries
Come come away [ ]
Farewell my life, farewell my soul's delight,
A death-like darkness tears me from thy sight
But ah, my Orpheus, ah, no longer mine;
Thy fond Eurydice, no longer thine,
[Still?] through the gloomy door with eager pain
Stretches her powerless arm to thee in vain.'
What prayers or songs of weeping can now move
The cruel fates to grant again [his?] love?
Even now cold shivering in the boat she stood,
That slowly struggled through the torpid flood.
For seven long moons, by Strymon's desert side,
He wept unceasing to the hollow tide;
While overhead, as still he wept and sung,
Aerial rocks in shaggy prospect hung.
Meek grew the tigers when in caverns hoar
He sung his tale of sorrow o'er and o'er;
The solemn forest at the magic song
Had ears to joy--and slowly moved along.

So darkling in the poplar's shady gloom
Mourns the lorn nightingale her hapless doom;
Mourns with low sighs and sadly pleasing tongue,
Torn callow from their nest, her darling young;
All night she weeps, slow-pouring from her throat
Renewed at every fall the plaintive note,
Moans round the cheerless nest with pious love;
The solemn warblings sadden all the grove.
No maid the mourner's widowed bosom moves
He sickened at the thought of other loves;
Hopeless and sad, with never ceasing moan,
He trod the snowy Tanais all alone.
He loved through cold Rhipaean snows to roam,
Cold fields of ice and snow his only home;
[Reft?] of his dear lost partner did he plain
Given to his arms from Death, but given in vain;
For which sad dearer office coldly spurned
The fell Ciconian Matrons inly burned
[ ] to Bacchus, as they paid
Nocturnal orgies in the midnight shade;
Him, mourning still, the savage maenads found
And strewed his mangled limbs the plain around;
His head was from its neck of marble torn
And down the Oeagrian Hebrus slowly borne.
Then too upon the voice and faltering tongue
Eurydice in dying accents hung;
Ah! poor Eurydice, it feebly cried;
Eurydice, the moaning banks replied.