To speak in season, use my rede and him.
My child, my boy! wise words in sooth may fall
From humble lips. This woman is a slave,
But her words breathe the spirit of the free.
What, mother? tell me, if it may be told.
She said that never to have gone in search
Of thy long absent father brings thee shame.
Nay, but if rumour’s true, I know of him.
Where hast thou heard, my son, that he abides?
Last season, so they say, the whole year through
He served as bondsman to a Lydian dame.
Naught would surprise me if he sank so low.
Well, that disgrace is over, so I hear.
Where is he now reported, living or dead?
He wars, or is about to war, they say,
Against Euboea and King Eurytus.
Know’st thou, my son, that when he went away
He left sure oracles anent that land?
What, mother? I ne’er heard of them before.
That either he should find his death, or when
He had achieved this final task, henceforth
Lead an unbroken life of peaceful ease.
Son, when his fate thus trembles in the scale,
Wilt thou not go to aid him? If he’s saved,
We too are saved; if lost, we perish too.
Ay, mother, I’ll away; had I but known
Of this prediction I had long been gone.
But, as it was, his happy star forbade
Excess of fear or doubt; but, now I know,
No pains I’ll spare to learn the perfect truth.
Go then, my son. However late the quest,
He who shall learn good news is well repaid! Exit Hyllus.
Strophe 1
Child of star-bespangled Night,
Born as she dies,
Laid to rest in a blaze of light,
Tell me, Sun-god, O tell me, where
Tarries the child of Alemena fair;
Thou from whose eyes,
Keen as lightning, naught can hide.
Doth he on either mainland bide?
Roams he over the sea straits driven?
Thou, omniscient eye of heaven,
Declare, declare!
Antistrophe 1
For like bird bereft of her mate
(Sad my tale)
Deianira, desolate,
She the maiden of many wooed,
Pines by fears for her lord pursued;
Ever she bodes some instant harm
Ever she starts at a new alarm,
With vigils pale.
Strophe 2
For as the tireless South or Northern blast
Billow on billow rolls o’er ocean wide,
So on the son of Cadmus follows fast
Sea upon sea of trouble, tide on tide;
And now he sinks, now rises; still some god
Is nigh to save him from Death’s whelming flood.
Antistrophe 2
Bear with me, lady, if I seem to chide thee.
Why by despondency is fair hope slain?
Think that high Zeus, if evil now betide thee,
No human lot ordaineth free from pain;
But as the Bear revolves in heaven all night,
So mortals move ’twixt sorrow and delight.
The sheen of night with daybreak wanes;
Pleasure follows after pains.
If perchance to-day thou art sad,
Then another man is glad.
Gains with losses alternate;
Naught is constant in one state:
Ponder this, my Queen, nor let
Carking care thy spirit fret.
Tell me hast thou ever known
Zeus unmindful of his own?
Doubtless ye must have heard of my distress,
And therefore come; but how my heart is racked
Ye cannot know—pray God ye ne’er may know it
By suffering! Like to us, the tender plant
Is reared and nurtured in some garden close;
Nor heat, nor rain, nor any breath of air
Vexes it, but unrufiled, unperturbed,
It buds and blossoms in sequestered bliss;
So fare we till the maid is called a wife
And finds her married portion in the night—
Dread terror for her husband or her child.
Only the woman who by trial knows
The cares of wedlock knows what I endure.
Many have been my sorrows in the past,
But now of one, the woefullest of all,
I have to tell. When Heracles, my lord,
On his last travel was about to start,
He left an ancient tablet in the house,
Inscribed with characters that ne’er before,
However desperate the enterprise,
He would interpret; for he aye set forth
As one about to do and not to die.
This time, as on his death bed, he prescribed
Due portion of his substance as my dower,
And to his children severally assigned
Their heritage of lands; and fixed a date,
Saying that when a year and three full moons
Had passed since he departed from his home,
He needs must die, or, if he then survived,
Live ever after an untroubled life;
So by the mouth of the two priestly Doves1
Dodona’s sacred oak had once declared.
And now, this very day, the hour has struck
For confirmation of the prophecy.
Thus from sweet slumber, friends, ye see me start
With terror at the thought of widowed days,
If he, the noblest of all men, were gone.
Hush! no ill-omened words! I see approaching
A messenger, bay-wreathed—he brings good news.
Queen Deianira, let me be the first
To rid thee of thy fears. Be well assured
Alemena’s son is living; o’er his foes
Victorious he is bringing home the spoils,
To offer firstfruits to his country’s gods.
Old man, what dost thou tell me?
That anon
Thou shalt behold in presence, at thy gate,
Illustrious, crowned with victory, thy lord.
Some stranger or a native told thee this?
The herald Lichas is proclaiming it
There in the summer pastures to the crowd.
From him I heard, and sped to be the first
To bring the news and win reward and thanks.
If such his news, why comes he not himself?
That were no light task; all our Malian folk
Cluster around him, hem him on all sides,
Ply him with questions, one and all intent
To hear his news; he cannot stir a step,
Midst willing hosts a most unwilling guest,
Till all their eagerness is satisfied.
But thou shalt see him face to face anon.
Lord of the unshorn meads of Oeta, Zeus,
Though long delayed, thou giv’st me joy at last.
Women within, and ye without the gates,
Uplift your voices, hail the new-born light
That dawns to
