Page:Sophocles - Seven Plays, 1900.djvu/201

1305–1342]

Should win for me great gain. Ill should I then

Serve the divinity of this high hour!

Thou knowest how matters in the palace stand.

Thou hast surely heard, Aegisthus is from home,

And she, our mother, is within. Nor fear

She should behold me with a smiling face.

Mine ancient hate of her hath sunk too deep.

And from the time I saw thee, tears of joy

Will cease not. Wherefore should I stint their flow?

I, who in this thy coming have beheld

Thee dead and living? Strangely hast thou wrought

On me;—that should my father come alive,

I would not think the sight were miracle,

But sober truth. Since such thy presence, then,

Lead as thy spirit prompts. For I alone

Of two things surely had achieved one,

Noble deliverance or a noble death.

. Be silent; for I hear within the house

A footstep coming forth.

. (loudly). Strangers, go in!

For none within the palace will reject

Your burden, nor be gladdened by the event.

. O lost in folly and bereft of soul!

Is ’t that your care for life hath ebbed away,

Or were you born without intelligence,

When fallen, not near, but in the midst of ill,

And that the greatest, ye perceive it not?

Had I not watched the doors this while, your deeds

Had gone within the palace ere yourselves.

But, as things are, my care hath fenced you round.

Now, then, have done with long-protracted talk,

And this insatiable outburst of joy,

And enter, for in such attempts as these

Delay is harmful: and ’tis more than time.

. But how shall I find matters there within?

. Well. You are shielded by their ignorance.

. That means you have delivered me as dead.

. Alone of dead men thou art here above.