Page:Sophocles - Seven Plays, 1900.djvu/73

1284-1325]

. O horrible! O charnel gulf

Of death on death, not to be done away,

Why harrowest thou my soul?

Ill-boding harbinger of woe, what word

Have thy lips uttered? Oh, thou hast killed me again,

Before undone!

What say’st? What were thy tidings? Woe is me!

Saidst thou a slaughtered queen in yonder hall

Lay in her blood, crowning the pile of ruin?

. No longer hidden in the house. Behold!

[The Corpse of is disclosed

. Alas!

Again I see a new, a second woe.

What more calamitous stroke of Destiny

Awaits me still? But now mine arms enfold

My child, and lo! yon corse before my face!

Ah! hapless, hapless mother, hapless son!

. She with keen knife before the altar place

Closed her dark orbs; but first lamented loud

The glorious bed of buried Megareus,

And then of Haemon; lastly clamoured forth

The curse of murdered offspring upon thee.

. Ay me! Ay me!

I am rapt with terror. Is there none to strike me

With doubly-sharpened blade a mortal blow?

Ah! I am plunged in fathomless distress.

. The guilt of this and of the former grief

By this dead lady was denounced on thee.

. Tell us, how ended she her life in blood?

. Wounding herself to the heart, when she had heard

The loud lamented death of Haemon here.

. O me! This crime can come

On no man else, exempting me.

I slew thee—I, O misery!

I say the truth, ’twas I! My followers,

Take me with speed—take me away, away!

Me, who am nothing now.