(C) 2003, Justin Eiler
Notes: Medusa. For those not familiar with the version of the story that I heard, Medusa was a beautiful woman who was seduced by Poseidon. His wife walked in on them, and cursed her to the serpent-tressed form that the myths remember her as. I have no idea what inspired this one...I more or less woke up with it full blown in my head.
The tune kind of stinks--I'm working on a new one, but suggestions won't go amiss.
I have wandered long among the mortals, My solitude has driven me quite mad. I care not if I die before the morning, If it would bring the peace I've never had. You say I slew your brother out of malice, You say that I'm too evil to abide. So, Hero, have you come to finally kill me? First listen to my tale, and then decide. Yes, I loved one who was above my station, But he it was who had his way with me. I thought him but a mortal, like the others I thought his wife a woman, just like me. I did not try to fight him when he took me, I did not think to say no to a man! His wife saw as I suffered his attentions, But it was me, not him, who felt her hand. Chorus: She cursed me for my hair of gold, And serpents grew instead. She cursed me for my sloe-brown eyes, Which now will strike you dead. I wandered long, but never in the daytime. I cursed and wailed my fate from dusk to dawn. Though many tried to help me, all were stricken, Though many try to love me, all are gone. I look for love, as water in the desert, I love each one who dies before my eyes. For I, though made to love, abide alone now, And with each victim, something in me dies. A thousand would-be lovers have come calling, Yet never one has touched before he died. I aqm a widow who was never married. I cannot shed the tears I wish I'd cried. Your brother came to me, not by my choosing. He thought to free me from the curse of life. He pledged to love me while his body lasted, He only asked if I would be his wife. [Chorus] And so with all of them--I love and lose them. They die between the darkness and the dawn. Your brother was the last of many victims, But I'm the first, who suffers on and on. So raise your sword, now, hero! Come and kill me! If you do not, then your life I will take. If you would stay your hand now, out of kindness, Your heart is harder stone than I can make.