Page:Ajax (Trevelyan 1919).djvu/42

 AIAS

The slayer stands so that his edge may cleave

Most surely, (if there be leisure for such thought,)

Being the gift of Hector, of all friends

Most unloved, and most hateful to my sight.

Then it is planted in Troy's hostile soil,

New-sharpened on the iron-biting whet.

And heedfully have I planted it, that so

With a swift death it prove to me most kind.

Thus have I made all ready. Next be thou

The first, Zeus, to aid me, as is right.

It is no mighty boon that I shall crave.

Send some announcer of the evil news

To Teucer, that he first may lift me up,

When I have fallen upon this reeking sword,

Lest ere he come some enemy should espy me

And cast me forth to dogs and birds a prey.

This, O Zeus, I entreat thee, and likewise call

On Hermes, guide to the underworld, to lay me

Asleep without a struggle, at one swift bound,

When I have thrust my heart through with this sword.

Next I call on those maidens ever-living

And ever watchful of all human miseries,

The dread swift-striding Erinues, that they mark

How by the Atreidæ I have been destroyed:

And these vile men by a vile doom utterly

May they cut off, even as they see me here.

Come, O ye swift avenging Erinues,

Spare not, touch with affliction the whole host.

And thou, whose chariot mounts up the steep sky,

Thou Sun, when on the land where I was born

Thou shalt look down, check thy gold-spangled rein,

And announce my disasters and my doom

To my aged sire and her who nurtured me.

She, woful woman, when she hears these tidings

Will wail out a loud dirge through all the town.

But I waste labour with this idle moan.