aaaThus may I see her die, like mine her end!
Antistrophe 3
Brother of Zeus, kind Death, be now my friend;
Lay me to rest and swift deliverance send.
I shudder, friends, to hear this woeful plaint.
How great a hero, and how ill bestead!
Many and grievous, not in name alone,
The toils and burdens of these hands, these loins.
Yet trial like to this was never set me
By Heaven’s Queen or grim Eurystheus’ hate,
Such as the child of Oeneus, false and fair,
Hath fastened on my back, this hellish net
She wove to snare me, in whose coils I die.
It hugs me close, it eats into my flesh,
It sucks the channels of my breath, hath drained
My life-blood, and my whole frame wastes and withers,
Fast locked in these unutterable bonds.
And this my fall no warrior’s lance hath wrought
Nor Giant’s earth-born brood, nor savage beast,
Nor Grecian nor barbarian, nor the lands
Whither I fared to rid them of their pests;
No, but a woman, weak as all her sex,
Hath quelled me, single-handed and unarmed.
Son, show thyself thy father’s son in deed,
Mine, not thy mother’s—mother in name alone.
Hale her thyself, hand her thyself to me,
The wretch, that when she meets her righteous doom
I may make trial which sight moves thee more,
A mother’s or a father’s agony.
For pity’s sake shrink not; to see me thus
(’Twould move to pity e’en a heart of stone)
Puling and weeping like a girl, unmanned.
So none can boast to have seen me, for till now
I took whate’er befell me with a smile.
And now—’tis I who play the woman now.
Come closer, stand beside me; see, my son,
To what a pass ill fate hath brought thy sire.
Lo, I will lift the veil; look all of you
On this poor maimèd body, and declare
Was ever wretch so piteous as I.
Ah me!
Again the deadly spasm; it shoots and burns
Through all my vitals. Will it never end,
This struggle with the never-dying worm?
Lord of the Dead, receive me!
Smite me, O fire of Zeus!
Hurl, Father, on my head thy crashing bolt!
Again it burgeons, blossoms, blazes forth,
The all-consuming plague. O hands, my hands,
Arms, breast and shoulders, once all puissant,
Are ye the same whose thews of old subdued
The scourge of herdsmen in his savage lair,
The Nemean lion, a beast untamable;
Slew the Lenaean hydra; overcame
That twy-form multitude, half man, half horse,
Rude, lawless, savage, unapproachable,
Unmatched in might; and the Erymanthian boar;
Tamed in the nether world the monstrous whelp
Of dread Echidna, the three-headed hound
Of Hades, and the dragon-guard who watched
The golden apples at the world’s far end.
These were my toils, and others manifold,
And none could ever boast of my defeat.
Now out of joint, a thing of shreds I lie
Baffled by hands invisible, I who claim
A mother of the noblest, and for sire
The ruler of the starry heavens, Zeus.
But of one thing be sure, though I am naught
And cannot stir a step, yet even thus
I am a match for her who wrought my woe.
Let her but come that she may learn of me
This lesson to repeat to all, that I
Living and dying chastened all that’s vile.
O hapless Greece, what mourning will be thine,
If thou must lose thy mightiest warrior?
O father, since thy silence seems to invite
An answer, hear me, stricken though thou art.
I shall but ask what’s fair; O be again
Thy true self, not by pain and rage distraught;
Else wilt thou never learn how vain thy thirst
For vengeance, how unjust thy bitterness.
Say what thou wilt and end; I am too sick
To catch the drift of all thy riddling words.
’Tis of my mother I would tell thee—how
She fares, and how unwittingly she sinned.
O shameless reprobate, thou dar’st to name
Thy father’s murderess, name her too to me?
Her case is such that silence were unmeet.
Unmeet in truth, because of her past crimes.
And of her deeds this day, as thou wilt own.
Speak, but I fear thy speech will prove thee base.
Hear then. She is dead, slain but an hour agone.
By whom? this portent likes me not; ’tis strange.
By her own hand, none other, was she slain.
Out on her! she hath baulked my just revenge.
E’en thou wouldst soften if thou knewest all.
A wondrous prologue! make thy meaning plain.
The sum is this: she erred with good intent.
“Good,” say’st thou, wretch? Was it good to slay thy sire?
Nay, when she saw thy new bride, she devised
A charm to win thee back, but was misled.
Could Trachis boast a wizard of such might?
The Centaur Nessus taught her long ago
How to enkindle in thy heart love’s flame.
Alas, alas! I am undone, undone,
The light of day has left me; now I see
In what extremity of fate I stand.
Go, son, thy father is no more; go summon
Thy brethren one and all, go summon too
Alemena, bride of Zeus—an empty name—
That from my dying lips ye all may learn
What oracles I know.
I cannot call
Thy mother; she at Tiryns by the sea
Far hence abides; and of thy children some
She took to live with her; others at Thebes,
As thou may’st learn, are lodged; but all of us
Here present, father, will obey thy hest.
Then listen thou and heed me. Now’s the hour
To prove thy breed—if thou art rightly called
My son. It was foreshown me by my sire
That I should perish by no living wight,
But by a dweller in the realms of Death.
So by this Centaur beast, as was foretold,
I perish, I the living by the dead.
A later oracle, as thou shalt learn,
Meets and confirms the ancient prophecy.
’Twas in the grove whose priests, the Selli, make
The earth their bed, rude hillsmen, that I heard it
Breathed by my Father’s oak of many tongues;
Heard it, and wrote it down, my present doom,
Now at this living moment brought to pass.
Release it promised from my toils, and I
Augured a happy life, but it meant death,
For with the dead there can be no more toil.
Since, then, my weird thus plainly comes to pass,
Thou,
