Page:Sophocles - Seven Plays, 1900.djvu/215

144–179]

Such the fair garden of untrammeled ease

Where the young life grows safely. No fierce heat,

No rain, no wind disturbs it, but unharmed

It rises amid airs of peace and joy,

Till maiden turn to matron, and the night

Inherit her dark share of anxious thought,

Haunted with fears for husband or for child.

Then, imaged through her own calamity,

Some one may guess the burden of my life.

Full many have been the sorrows I have wept,

But one above the rest I tell to-day.

When my great husband parted last from home,

He left within the house an ancient scroll

Inscribed with characters of mystic note,

Which Heracles had never heretofore,

In former labours, cared to let me see,—

As bound for bright achievement, not for death.

But now, as though his life had end, he told

What marriage-portion I must keep, what shares

He left his sons out of their father’s ground:

And set a time, when fifteen moons were spent,

Counted from his departure, that even then

Or he must die, or if that date were out

And he had run beyond it, he should live

Thenceforth a painless and untroubled life.

Such by Heaven’s fiat was the promised end

Of Heracles’ long labours, as he said;

So once the ancient oak-tree had proclaimed

In high Dodona through the sacred Doves.

Of which prediction on this present hour

In destined order of accomplishment

The veritable issue doth depend.

And I, dear friends, while taking rest, will oft

Start from sweet slumbers with a sudden fear,

Scared by the thought, my life may be bereft

Of the best husband in the world of men.

. Hush! For I see approaching one in haste,

Garlanded, as if laden with good news.