Casey Neate

“Gods of Hellas, gods of Hellas,
Can ye listen in your silence?
Can your mystic voices tell us
Where ye hide? In floating islands,
With a wind that evermore
Keeps you out of sight of shore?
Pan, Pan is dead.”
― Elizabeth Barrett Browning

“Even the gods took fright at the Deluge,
they left and went up to the heaven of Anu,
lying like dogs curled up in the open.
The goddess cried out like a woman in childbirth,
Belet-ili wailed, whose voice is so sweet:

"The olden times have turned to clay,
because I spoke evil in the gods' assembly.
How could I speak evil in the gods' assembly,
and declare a war to destroy my people?

"It is I who give birth, these people are mine!
And now, like fish, they fill the ocean!”
― Anonymous, The Epic of Gilgamesh

“But now I get it! I am that other one!
I've finally seen through my own image!
I burn with love for - me! The spark I kindle
is the torch I carry: whatever can I do?
Am I the favor-seeker, or the favor sought?

Why seek at all, when all that I desire
is mine already? Riches in such abundance
that I've been left completely without means!

Oh, would that I were able to secede
from my own body, depart from what I love!
(Now that's an odd request from any lover.)
My grief is draining me, my end is near;
soon I will be extinguished in my prime.
This death is no grave matter, for it brings an end to sorrow. Of course, I would have been
delighted if my beloved could have lived on,
but now in death we two will merge as one.”
― Ovid, Metamorphoses

“Through steep, and sheer, and inaccessible,
through difficult and through impossible
places, they track him, and he flees the hunt
he has so often led, longing to cry out
to the pack behind him, "It's me! Actaeon!
Recognize your master!" But the words
betray him and the air resounds with baying.

...torn by their teeth, he makes
a sound no man would make and no stag either,
a cry that echoes through those well-know heights;
and kneeling like a supplicant at prayer,
he turns towards them pleading with his eyes,
as a man would with his hands.”
― Ovid, Metamorphoses