The Overmantel in the King's Chamber at Broughton Castle
Without a qualm he [Erisychthon] cut down every tree
In the sacred grove of Ceres —
An ancient wood that had never, before that day,
Jumped to the axe's stroke.
Among those trees
One prodigious oak was all to itself
A tangled forest. Its boughs were bedecked with wreaths
And votive tributes — each for a prayer
Ceres had some time granted. Dryads there
Danced a holy circle around its bole
Or joined hands to embrace it —
A circumference of twenty paces.
Erisychthon ignores all this as
He assesses the volume of its timber ...
He snatches an axe — and hauls
The weight of the broad head up and back.
But in that moment, as the blade hangs
Poised for the first downstroke, shudderings
Swarm through the whole tree, to its outermost twigs
And a groan bursts out of the deep grain.
At the same time
Every bough goes grey — every leaf
Whitens, and every acorn whitens.
Then the blade bites and the blood leaps
As from the neck of a great bull when it drops
Under the axe at the altar ...
Then the oak, as he turns back to it, pronounces,
In a clear voice, these words:
“I live in this tree. I am a nymph,
Beloved by Ceres, the goddess.
“With my last breath, I curse you. As this oak
Falls on the earth, your punishment
Will come down on you with all its weight.
That is my consolation . And your fate.”
Erisychthon ignored her. He just kept going,
Undercutting the huge trunk, till ropes
Brought the whole mass down, jolting the earth,
Devastating the underbrush around it.
All the nymphs of the sacred grove mourned it.
Dressed in black, they came to Ceres,
Cryng for the criminal to be punished,
Bewailing the desecration. The goddess listened.
Then the summer farms, the orchards, the vineyards,
The whole flushed, ripening harvest, shivered
As she pondered how to make his death
A parable of her anger ...
She condemned him
To Hunger —
But infinite, insatiable Hunger,
The agony of Hunger as a frenzy.
Destiny has separated Hunger
So far from the goddess of abundance
They can never meet, therefore Ceres
Commissioned a mountain spirit, an ode read:
“Hear what I say and do not be afraid.
Far away to the north of Scythia
Lies a barren country, leafless, dreadful:
Ice permanent as iron, air that aches.
“A howling land of rocks, gales and snow.
There mad Hunger staggers. Go. Bid Hunger
Take possession of Erisychthon's belly.
Tell her she has power over all my powers
“To nourish Erisychthon ... ”
And she breathes
Into every channel of his body
A hurricane of starvation...