Page:Sophocles - Seven Plays, 1900.djvu/110

76 Oh, where shall end the incessant woe

Of troublous spear-encounter with the foe,

Through this vast Trojan plain,

Of Grecian arms the lamentable stain?

Would he had gone to inhabit the wide sky,

Or that dark home of death where millions lie,

Who taught our Grecian world the way

To use vile swords and knit the dense array!

His toil gave birth to toil

In endless line. He made mankind his spoil.

His tyrant will hath forced me to forgo

The garland, and the goblet’s bounteous flow:

Yea, and the flute’s dear noise,

And night’s more tranquil joys;

Ay me! nor only these,

The fruits of golden ease,

But Love, but Love—O crowning sorrow!—

Hath ceased for me. I may not borrow

Sweet thoughts from him to smooth my dreary bed,

Where dank night-dews fall ever on my head,

Lest once I might forget the sadness of the morrow.

Even here in Troy, Aias was erst my rock,

From darkling fears and ’mid the battle-shock

To screen me with huge might:

Now he is lost in night

And horror. Where again

Shall gladness heal my pain?

O were I where the waters hoary,

Round Sunium’s pine-clad promontory,

Plash underneath the flowery upland height.

Then holiest Athens soon would come in sight,

And to Athena’s self I might declare my story.

. My steps were hastened, brethren, when I saw

Great Agamemnon hitherward afoot.

He means to talk perversely, I can tell.