Page:Sophocles - Seven Plays, 1900.djvu/84

50

Alas! the approaching doom awakes my terror.

The man will die, disgraced in open day,

Whose dark-dyed steel hath dared through mad-brained error

The mounted herdmen with their herds to slay.

. O horror! Then ’twas there he found

The flock he brought as captives tied;

And some he slew upon the ground,

And some, side-smiting, sundered wide.

Two white-foot rams he backward drew,

And bound. Of one he shore and threw

The tipmost tongue and head away;

The other to an upright stay

He tied, and with a harness thong

Doubled in hand, gave whizzing blows,

Echoing his lashes with a song

More dire than mortal fury knows.

. Ah! then ’tis time, our heads in mantles hiding,

Our feet on some stol’n pathway now to ply,

Or with sift oarage o’er the billows gliding,

With ordered stroke to make the good ship fly.

Such threats the Atridae, armed with two-fold power,

Launch to assail us. Oh, I sadly fear

Stones from fierce hands on us and him will shower,

Whose heavy plight no comfort may come near.

. ’Tis changed; his rage, like sudden blast,

Without the lightning-gleam is past.

And now that Reason’s light returns,

New sorrow in his spirit burns.

For when we look on self-made woe,

In which no hand but ours had part,

Thought of such griefs and whence they flow

Brings aching misery to the heart.

. If he hath ceased to rave, he should do well.

The account of evil lessens when ’tis past.

. If choice were given you, would you rather choose

Hurting your friends, yourself to feel delight,