Page:Sophocles (Storr 1919) v2.djvu/239



What need for silence?

’Twere wise, lest someone from the house should hear.

Nay, by Queen Artemis the virgin maid,

Of women-folk I ne’er will be afraid,

Those stay-at-homes, mere cumberers of the ground.

Yet note that in the breasts of women dwells

The War-God too, as thou methinks hast found.

Ah me, ah me!

Thou wak’st a memory

Inveterate, ineffaceable,

An ache time cannot quell.

I know it too; but when the hour shall strike

Then it behoves us to recall those deeds.

All time, each passing hour

Henceforward I were fain

To tell my gfriefs, my pain,

For late and hardly have I won free speech.

’Tis so; then forfeit not this liberty.

How forfeit it?

By speaking out of season overmuch. 227