Page:Sophocles - Seven Plays, 1900.djvu/242

208

Ah me!

Ah! ah! Again!

Even now the hot convulsion of disease

Shoots through my side, and will not let me rest

From this fierce exercise of wearing woe.

Take me, O King of Night!

O sudden thunderstroke,

Smite me! O sire, transfix me with the dart

Of thy swift lightning! Yet again that fang

Is tearing; it hath blossomed forth anew,

It soars up to the height!

O breast and back,

O shrivelling arms and hands, ye are the same

That crushed the dweller of the Némean wild,

The lion unapproachable and rude,

The oxherd’s plague, and Hydra of the lake

Of Lerna, and the twi-form prancing throng

Of Centaurs,—insolent, unsociable,

Lawless, ungovernable:—the tuskèd pest

Of Erymanthine glades; then underground

Pluto’s three-headed cur—a perilous fear,

Born from the monster-worm; and, on the verge

Of Earth, the dragon, guarding fruits of gold.

These toils and others countless I have tried,

And none hath triumphed o’er me. But to-day,

Jointless and riven to tatters, I am wrecked

Thus utterly by imperceptible woe;

I, proudly named Alcmena’s child, and His

Who reigns in highest heaven, the King supreme!

Ay, but even yet, I tell ye, even from here,

Where I am nothingness and cannot move,

She who hath done this deed shall feel my power.

Let her come near, that, mastered by my might,

She may have this to tell the world, that, dying,

As living, I gave punishment to wrong.

. O Hellas, how I grieve for thy distress!

How thou wilt mourn in losing him we see!

. My father, since thy silence gives me leave,

Still hear me patiently, though in thy pain!

For my request is just. Lend me thy mind