Page:Sophocles - Seven Plays, 1900.djvu/170

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. Take heart, dear child! still mighty in the sky

Is Zeus who ruleth all things and surveys.

Commit to him thy grief that surgeth high,

And walk in safer ways,

Let not hate vex thee sore,

Nor yet ignore

The cause of hate and sorrow in thy breast.

Time bringeth rest:

All is made easy through his power divine.

The heir of Agamemnon’s line

Who dwells by Crisa’s pastoral strand

Shall yet return unto his native land;

And he shall yet regard his own

Who reigns beneath upon his Stygian throne.

. Meanwhile my life falls from me in despair

Years pass and patience nought avails:

My heart within me fails:

Orphaned I pine without protecting care;

And like a sojourner all unregarded

At slave-like labour unrewarded

I toil within my father’s hall

Thus meanly attired, and starved, a table-serving thrall.

. Sad was thy greeting when he reached the strand,

Piteous thy crying where thy father lay

On that fell day

When the bronze edge with dire effect was driven.

By craft ’twas planned,

By frenzied lust the blow was given:

Mother and father of a monstrous birth,

Whether a God there wrought or mortal of the Earth.

. O day beyond all days that yet have rolled

Most hateful in thy course of light!

O horror of that night!

O hideous feast, abhorr’d, not to be told!

How could I bear it, when my father’s eye

Saw death advancing from the ruthless pair,

Conjoint in cruel villany,

By whom my life was plunged in black despair?