Tecmessa, daughter of Teleutas, dread
Thy tidings of our master thus distraught.
Woe, woe is me!
Worse is to come, I fear me. Heard ye not
The voice of Ajax—that heartrending cry?
Woe, woe is me!
’Tis a fresh fit, methinks, or else he groans
At sight of all the ills his frenzy wrought.
My son, my son!
Ah me! Eurysaces, ’tis for thee he calls.
What would he? Where art thou, my son? ah me!
Ho Teucer! where is Teucer? Will his raid
End never? And the while I am undone!
He seems himself again. Quick, ope the door.
Perchance the sight of us his humble friends
May bring him to a soberer mood.
I open,
And thou mayst view his works and his own plight.
Strophe 1
Mariners, ever leal and true,
Alas my friends have left me, all but you,
See how disasters whelmed me like a flood,
And now I welter in a surge of blood.
Ah, lady, thy report was all too true,
Too clear the tokens of an unhinged brain.
Antistrophe 1
Sailors brave, whose flashing oar
Swift and sure the good ship bore,
To you I look for comfort, none but you;
Come slay me too.
O hush, essay not ill by ill to cure,
Nor aggravate the burden of thy doom.
Strophe 2
See’st thou the bold, stout-hearted knight
Who never quailed to face the fight,
Now on tame beasts that fear no harm
He proves the puissance of his arm.
Ah me! the mockery, the scorn, the shame!
Ajax, my dearest master, speak not so.
Out with thee, woman; hence, avaunt, begone!
Ah me! ah me!
O listen, I adjure thee, and be ruled.
Wretch to let those fiends, my foes,
Slip, while on the flock my blows
And the goodly cattle rained,
Till with their dark blood all the house was stained.
Why vex thyself for what is past recall?
What’s done is done and naught can alter it.
Antistrophe 2
Spy of the time, apt tool for any guile,
Of all the host the sublest knave, most vile,
Son of Laertes, loud and long, I trow,
Thou laughest in malignant triumph now.
Laughter or mourning comes as God ordains.
Would I could see him, shattered though I be!
Ah me!
No boastful words; see’st not thy piteous case?
O Zeus, my grand sire, would that I
Might slay that knave, my bane,
That arch-dissembler and the generals twain.
Then let me die!
When thus thou prayest, pray that I with thee
May die; why should I live when thou art dead?
Strophe 3
O woe is me!
Darkness, my light!
O nether gloom to me more bright
Than midday, take, O take me to your care!
I am too vile to share
The kindly aid of mortals, and the gods
Have left me. Nay, the Warrior Maid, Zeus-born,
Laughs me to scorn;
I quail beneath her rods.
Whither to fly? What hope of rest is left,
If of my ancient fame bereft,
Dead as these slaughtered sheep around me slain,
A madman’s crown I gain,
While all the host at my devoted head
Would strike, and smite me dead?
Ah me that one so good should utter words
That hitherto he ne’er had deigned to breathe!
Paths of the roaring waves,
Ye salt sea caves
And pastures by the shore,
Where long, too long I roam
In Troy-land, far from home;
Me shall ye see no more—
No more in life. Give ear
All who can hear.
Streams of Scamander, rills
That flow from Ida’s hills,
Streams to the Greeks so dear,
Ne’er shall ye look on Ajax more;
A paladin whose peer
(For I will utter a proud boast)
In all the Grecian host
That sailed from Hellas’ shore
Troy ne’er beheld. But now
Low in the dust, o’erthrown, his head doth bow.
How to restrain or how to let thee speak
I cannot tell, beset by endless woes.
Ay me! Whoe’er had thought how well my name
Would fit my misery? Ay me! Ay me!2
Yea, twice and thrice may I repeat the wail
That syllables my woe-begone estate.
My sire, a peerless warrior, home returned
Back from the land of Ida, crowned with fame,
Proclaimed as champion bravest of the brave.
And I, his son, in might not less than he,
Sailed after him to this same land of Troy,
And served the host by deeds of no less worth,
And for reward I perish by the Greeks
Dishonoured. Yet one thing I know full well:
If to Achilles living it had fallen
His arms as meed of valour to award,
No man had grasped the prize, preferred to me.
But now the Atridae, scouting my just claim,
Have yielded to a miscreant’s base intrigue.
Had not mine eyes been dazed, my mind distraught
And wrested from its purpose, they had never
Procured false sentence ’gainst a second man.
Alas! the grim-eyed goddess, unsubdued
Daughter of Zeus—as I was at their heels,
Almost at grips with them, in act to strike—
Foiled me, abused me by a frenzy fit,
Imbrued my hands with blood of these poor beasts.
And thus my foes exult in their escape,
Albeit I willed it not, and mock at me.
But if some god or goddess intervene,
Even a knave may worst the better man.
And now what’s left me? By the gods, ’tis clear,
I am detested, hated by the host
Of Greeks, abhorred by Troy and all the camp.
Shall I sail homeward o’er the Aegean, leave
The sons of Atreus to fight on alone,
This roadstead undefended? Then how face
My father Telamon? How will he endure
To look on me returning empty-handed
Without the meed of valour that he held
Himself, a crown of everlasting fame?
That were intolerable. Am I then
Alone to storm the Trojan battlements,
And facing single-handed a whole host,
Do some high deed of prowess—and so die?
Nay, that methinks would give the Atridae joy.
It may not be; some emprise must be found
That shall convince my aged sire his son
Is not degenerate from his father’s breed.
Base were it that a man should want long life
When all he gets is long unchanging trouble.
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow—
What pleasure comes of that? ’Tis but a move
Forward or backward and the end—is death!
I would not count that mortal worth a doigt
Who lives on, fed by
