Page:Essays and Addresses.djvu/31

 "Ah me, whose hands and shoulders have borne full many a fiery trial and evil to tell! But never yet hath the wife of Zeus or the hated Eurystheus laid on me aught so dreadful as this woven snare of the Furies, which the daughter of Œneus, falsely fair, hath fastened on my shoulders, and by which I perish. Glued to my sides, it has eaten away my flesh to the bone; it is ever with me, sucking the channels of my breath; already it has drained my vigorous blood, and in all my body I am marred, the thrall of these unutterable bonds. Not the warrior on the battle-field, not the giant's earthborn host, nor the might of wild beasts, nor Hellas, nor the land of the alien, nor all the lands that I have visited and purged, have done unto me thus; but a woman, a weak woman, born not to the strength of man, alone, alone has struck me down without a sword.

"O King Hades, receive me!—Smite me, O flash of Zeus! O King, O Father, dash, hurl thy thunderbolt upon me! Again the pest eats me—it has blazed up, it has started into fury! O hands, hands, O shoulders and breast and trusty arms, ye, ye in this plight, are they who once tamed by force the haunter of Nemea, the scourge of herdsmen, the lion whom no man might approach or face—who tamed the hydra of Lerna and the host of monsters of double form, man joined to horse, with whom none might mingle, fierce, lawless, of surpassing might—tamed the Erymanthian beast and the three-headed dog of Hades underground, an appalling foe, offspring of the dread Echidna,—tamed the serpent