Page:Sophocles - Seven Plays, 1900.djvu/284

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And hardship in sickness is sore,

But sorest in pain.

. Kindest of all that e’er before

Have trod this shore,

Again thou mind’st me of mine ancient woe!

Why wilt thou ruin me? What wouldst thou do?

. How meanest thou?

. If to Troy, of me abhorred,

Thou e’er hast hoped to lead me with thy lord.

. So I judge best.

. Begone at once, begone!

. Sweet is that word, and swiftly shall be done!

Let us be gone, each to his place on board.

[The Chorus make as if they were going

. Nay, by dear Zeus, to whom all suppliants moan,

Leave me not yet!

. Keep measure in thy word.

. Stay, by Heaven, stay!

. What wilt thou say?

. O misery! O cruel power

That rul’st this hour!

I am destroyed. Ah me!

O poor torn limb, what shall I do with thee

Through all my days to be?

Ah, strangers, come, return, return!

. What new command are we to learn

Crossing thy former mind?

. Ah! yet be kind.

Reprove not him, whose tongue, with grief distraught,

Obeys not, in dark storms, the helm of thought!

. Come, poor friend, the way we call.

. Never, learn it once for all!

Not though he, whom Heaven obeys,

Blast me with fierce lightning’s blaze!

Perish Troy, and all your host,

That have chosen, to their cost,

To despise and cast me forth,

Since my wound obscured my worth!

Ah, but, strangers, if your sense