Page:Sophocles - Seven Plays, 1900.djvu/255

135–162]

Strange in the stranger land,

What shall I speak? What hide

From a heart suspicious of ill?

Tell me, O master mine!

Wise above all is the man,

Peerless in searching thought,

Who with the Zeus-given wand

Wieldeth a Heaven-sent power.

This unto thee, dear son,

Fraught with ancestral might,

This to thy life hath come.

Wherefore I bid thee declare,

What must I do for thy need?

. Even now methinks thou longest to espy

Near ocean’s marge the place where he doth lie.

Gaze without fear. But when the traveller stern,

Who from this roof is parted, shall return,

Advancing still as I the signal give,

To serve each moment’s mission thou shalt strive.

. That, O my son, from of old

Hath been my care, to take note

What by thy beck’ning is told;

Still thy success to promote.

Buit for our errand to-day

Behoves thee, master, to say

Where is the hearth of his home;

Or where even now doth he roam?

O tell me, lest all unaware

He spring like a wolf from his lair

And I by surprise should be ta’en,

Where doth he move or remain,

Here lodging, or wandering away?

. Thou seest yon double doorway of his cell,

Poor habitation of the rock.

. But tell

Where is the pain-worn wight himself abroad?

. To me ’tis clear, that, in his quest for food,