Page:Sophocles (Storr 1919) v2.djvu/153

 Fordone with care,

Without a parent’s love or husband’s aid,

An orphaned maid.

Here in the chambers of my sire I wait

In low estate,

Or like a stranger who in beggar’s weeds

On fragments feeds.

Dire was the voice that greeted first

Thy sire’s return, and dire the cry

That from the banquet-chamber burst,

A wail of agony;

What time the brazen axe’s blow

Struck him and laid him low,

’Twas lust begat and craft conceived the deed,

A monstrous offspring of a monstrous seed,

Whether a god or mortal wrought the woe.

Dawn, the darkest of all morrows,

Night, the crown of all my sorrows,

When that foul feast for the dead

By those traitors twain was spread,

Who slew my sire—me too

In slaying him they slew.

May the great Olympian King

Send on them like suffering;

Bitter be of sin the fruit;

May they perish branch and root!

O curb thy tongue I hast thou no thought 141