Page:Sophocles - Seven Plays, 1900.djvu/188

154 . One in a woman’s toils

Was tangled, buried by her glittering coils,

Who now beneath

. Ah woe!

. Rules with a spirit unimpaired and strong.

. O dreadful!

. Dreadful was the wrong.

. But she was quelled.

. Ay.

. True!

That faithful mourner knew

A brother’s aid. But I

Have no man now. The one

I had, is gone, is gone.

Rapt into nothingness.

. Thou art wrung with sore distress.

. I know it. Too well I know,

Taught by a life of woe,

Where horror dwells without relief.

. Our eyes have seen thy grief.

. Then comfort not again

. Whither now turns thy strain?

. One utterly bereft,

Seeing no hope is left,

Of help from hands owning the same great sire.

. ’Tis nature’s debt.

. To expire

On sharp-cut dragging thongs,

’Midst wildly trampling throngs

Of swiftly racing hoofs, like him,

Poor hapless one?

. Vast, dim,

And boundless was the harm.

. Yea, severed from mine arm,

By strangers kept

. O pain!

. Hidden he must remain,

Of me unsepulchred, unmourned, unwept.