Page:Sophocles - Seven Plays, 1900.djvu/61

834–873] . But she was a goddess born,

We but of mortal line;

And sure to rival the fate

Of a daughter of sires Divine

Were no light glory in death.

. O mockery of my woe!

I pray you by our fathers’ holy Fear,

Why must I hear

Your insults, while in life on earth I stand,

O ye that flow

In wealth, rich burghers of my bounteous land?

O fount of Dircè, and thou spacious grove,

Where Thebè’s chariots move!

Ye are my witness, though none else be nigh,

By what enormity of lawless doom,

Without one friendly sigh,

I go to the strong mound of yon strange tomb,—

All hapless, having neither part nor room

With those who live or those who die!

. Thy boldness mounted high,

And thou, my child, ’gainst the great pedestal

Of Justice with unmeasured force didst fall.

Thy father’s lot still presseth hard on thee.

. That pains me more than all.

Ah! thou hast touched my father’s misery

Still mourned anew,

With all the world-famed sorrows on us rolled

Since Cadmus old.

O cursèd marriage that my mother knew!

O wretched fortune of my sire, who lay

Where first he saw the day!

Such were the authors of my burdened life;

To whom, with curses dowered, never a wife,

I go to dwell beneath.

O brother mine, thy princely marriage-tie

Hath been thy downfall, and in this thy death

Thou hast destroyed me ere I die.

. ’Twas pious, we confess,

Thy fervent deed. But he, who power would show,