Si potuit manis accersere coniugis Orpheus
Threicia fretus cithara fidibusque canoris…
~
If Orpheus was able to summon the soul of his wife,
relying on his Thracian lyre and tuneful strings…
(Aeneid, Vergil; Bk. VI ln.s 119-120)

Vergil’s Aeneid dedicates two lines to briefly revisiting the story of the harper Orpheus who took himself to the underworld to release his wife, Eurydice, from the bonds of death. According to Barbara Weiden Boyd, author of notes for a textbook edition of selections from the Aeneid, “the story of the poet Orpheus’ descent to the underworld to bring back to life his beloved wife Eurydice was well known to Vergil’s readers, first and foremost from his own version of the story in Book 4 of the Georgics.” Vergil in his Georgics gives at least 80 lines to telling the tale of Orpheus in detail. This story, although it has a tragic ending, has always fascinated me, and so here I have attempted to summarize the legend in English poetry of my own making. In other words, this is not a translation of Vergil, rather it is a poem aimed at describing a legend Vergil introduced.

Note: Calliope is Orpheus’ mother, the “beautiful-voiced” muse.

O lovely Muse I sing of Orpheus –
Calliope: thy son who sang thy songs
His wife Eurydice once was beautiful
Her voice and his twined through the Thracian lands.
Alas, O Muse, a son of god Apollo,
Aristaeus, now caught in his mad passion
Pursued the lovely Eurydice with longing.
See, she runs along a river rushing
Heedless of where her feet may fall along
Her hair is loose and all the Dryads watch her
All crying silent warnings from their perches.
She does not see the serpent in the shallows
Calliope, now watch its bloodred eyes
Its forkéd tongue with hissing licks its lips
And dark, its broad back twists into a coil.
Alas! the serpent now has caught her heel
Along the stream Eurydice lies at last
Her heel is bleeding, and her eyes have clouded
Her lifeblood flows away down to the sea.
Now see the anguish! Now her husband finds her
Orpheus’ cries reach to the stars above.
The Dryads all around him weep their weeping
Their song of sadness echoes through the wood
Orpheus through the night waits for the dawn.
The sun sees Eurydice’s lifeless body
But where, she asks, has Orpheus now gone?
You see him, Calliope, near the river
He enters now the threshold of Avernus
The lake which holds the entrance underworldly.
Now down! Orpheus makes his way beneath there
Into the darkness whence none e’er return.
His fingers twine within his stringéd harp
And from his lips come melodies from high.
Orpheus — see! — goes circ’ling round Cocytus
The blackest river e’er a god has seen
The river guarded by the hound Cerebus
Even the third head there is calmed with song.
Eumenides come flocking close to torment
The Furies, they are called, cease now to listen
As Orpheus, thy son, as thou hast taught him
Through Hades sings thy citharian songs.
Proserpina, the queen of Manes king there
Sees shades come winding out to meet his song.
Their hair is drenched with black Cocytan waters
Their faces gaunt and eyes of mottled stone.
She sees Eurydice glide to meet Orpheus
She sees his eyes with love rest on her face
Proserpina — look! — gives your son permission
To take his wife if he looks not back at her.
Orpheus turns, Eurydice’s shade behind him
He sings their way up to Avernus bright
But no! Bliss is not his, for as he reaches
The heights of light and life and wood and water
Seized with his love Orpheus looks back at her
He disobeys the Queen of Hades grim.
Eurydice must return to death and darkness
Orpheus sings his grief forever more.