O my chief, thou hast slain
Me thy shipmate! my heart
Bleeds for thee, lady forlorn.
Thus lies he overthrown; ’tis ours to wail.
By whose hand did he thus procure his death?
By his own hand, ’tis manifest; the sword
Set in the ground, on which he fell, is proof.
Out on my blindness! All alone
Unwatched of friends he bled to death!
And I saw naught, heard naught, recked naught of thee!
Where lies he, Ajax, the self-willed,
The unbending, luckless as his name?
No eye shall look on him; this robe around
Shall lap him and enshroud from head to foot.
For none who knew him, not his dearest friend,
Could bear to see him, as the dark blood spurts
Up through his nostrils from the self-wrought wound.
What shall I do? What friend shall lift him up?
Where, where is Teucer? Timely would he come,
If come he might, to raise him and lay out
His brother’s corse. Ah me! How high thou stood’st,
My Ajax, and how low thou liest here!
A sight to melt to tears e’en foemen’s eyes!
Antistrophe
Ah woeful hero, ’twas thy fate,
With that unyielding soul of thine,
In endless misery to decline,
And reach the goal of ruin, soon or late.
I knew it as I heard thee eve and morn
Against the Atridae vent
Thy passionate complaint,
A bitter cry of proud disdain and scorn.
Aye, then began my woes
When first arose
The contest who those arms could claim
As guerdon for the first in warlike fame.
Woe, woe is me!
The anguish, well I know it,
Pierces to thy true heart.
Woe, woe is me!
No marvel thou shouldst wail and wail again
Bereft so lately and of one so loved.
The woe I feel thou canst in part conceive.
’Tis true.
Alas, my child, to what hard yoke
Of bondage must we come, so merciless
The taskmasters set over thee and me!
The Atridae, ruthless pair,
And their grim deeds ineffable
Thy boding soul prefigures. God avert it!
Save by God’s will we were not in this case.
They have laid on us a load too hard to bear.
Yet such the plague wherewith the daughter dire
Of Zeus afflicts us for Odysseus’ sake.
Yea, how the patient hero must exult
In his dark soul and mock
With fiendish laughter at our frenzied grief;
And the two chiefs withal,
The Atridae, when they learn his fate.
Well, let them laugh and mock at Ajax fall’n.
It may be, though they missed him not in life,
When comes the stress of war they’ll mourn him dead.
Men of mean judgment know not the good thing
They have and hold till they have squandered it.
He by his death more sorrow gave to me
Than joy to them; to himself ’twas pure content,
For all he yearned to attain he won himself—
Death that he chose. Then wherefore scoff at him?
The gods were authors of his death, not they.
So let Odysseus, if it please him, vent
Vain taunts; for them there is no Ajax more,
And dying he has left me naught but woe.
Woe, woe is me!
Hist, hist! methinks ’tis Teucer’s voice I hear,
That woeful strain of mourning at our loss.
Beloved Ajax, dearest of my kin,
Did fame not lie then? hast thou fared thus ill?
He hath perished, Teucer, and report spake true.
Then woe is me for my most grievous loss.
And since ’tis thus—
Alas for me, alas!
The hour for mourning—
O sharp pang of pain!
Is come, O Teucer, as thou say’st.
Ay me!
But his son—where in Troy-land bides he now?
Alone beside the tent.
Then bring him quickly,
Lest of our foemen one should snatch him up,
As from a lioness forlorn her cub.
Go quick, bestir thyself. ’Tis the world’s way
To flout and triumph o’er the prostrate dead. Exit Tecmessa.
Yea, while he yet lived Ajax left to thee,
Teucer, this child, to tend him, as thou dost.
O saddest sight of all I ever saw,
O bitterest of all paths I ever trod,
The path that led me hither, Ajax loved,
My best-loved Ajax! when I learnt thy fate,
B’en as I tracked in desperate haste thy steps;
For a swift rumour, like a voice from heaven,
Ran through the host that thou wert dead and gone.
I heard it and I moaned in spirit afar,
But now the sight strikes death into my soul.
O woe!
Come, lift the searcloth; let me see the worst.
O bleeding form, O agonising sight!
How brave, how rash, how cruel in thy death;
Thy death, what seed of misery for me!
Where can I turn, what race of men will house me,
The wretch who failed to help thee in thy woes?
How Telamon, thy sire and mine withal,
Will beam upon me (can’st not picture him?)
When I return without thee! Telamon
Who in his hours of fortune never smiles!
Will he refrain? Will he not curse and ban
The bastard of his spear-won concubine,
The wretch who like a coward and poltroon
Forsook thee, dearest Ajax, or conspired
To hold thy realm and halls when thou wert dead?
Thus will he rave, the choleric, soured old man,
Ready to pick a quarrel for a straw.
And in the end I shall be banned, defamed,
Rejected, branded—No free man, a slave.
Such cheer at home awaits me, and at Troy
My foes are many and my friends to seek.
Thus by thy death I’ve profited! Ah me!
How tear thee from this cruel glittering blade,
That stands arraigned thine executioner?
See’st thou how Hector dead and turned to dust
Was fated in the end to be thy death?
Look on the fortunes of the two, I pray ye:
Hector, who by the very belt he wore,
A gift from Ajax, lashed to the car-rail
Was dragged and mangled till his ghost expired;5
And this the sword whose murderous edge transfixed
The side of Ajax—this was Hector’s gift.
Say, was it not some Fury forged this blade,
Was not that hellish girdle wove by Death?
I hold, for my part, these and all things else
The gods contrive for mortals. But may be
Some disapprove my creed;
