Page:Sophocles - Seven Plays, 1900.djvu/86

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With torrent laughter and loud triumphing

What in his raid he had wreaked to their despite.

Then diving back within—the fitful storm

Slowly assuaging left his spirit clear.

And when his eye had lightened through the room

Cumbered with ruin, smiting on his brow

He roared; and, tumbling down amid the wreck

Of woolly carnage he himself had made,

Sate with clenched hand tight twisted in his hair.

Long stayed he so in silence. Then flashed forth

Those frightful words of threatening vehemence,

That bade me show him all the night’s mishap,

And whither he was fallen. I, dear my friends,

Prevailed on through my fear, told all I knew.

And all at once he raised a bitter cry,

Which heretofore I ne’er had heard; for still

He made us think such doleful utterance

Betokened the dull craven spirit, and still

Dumb to shrill wailings, he would inly moan

With half-heard muttering, like an angry bull.

But now, by such dark fortune overpowered,

Foodless and dry, amid the quivering heap

His steel hath quelled, all quietly he broods;

And out of doubt his mind intends some harm:

Such words, such groans, burst from him. O my friends,—

Therefore I hastened,—enter and give aid

If aught ye can! Men thus forgone will oft

Grow milder through the counsel of a friend.

. Teleutas’ child! we shudder at thy tale

That fatal frenzy wastes our hero’s soul.

(within). Woe ’s me, me, me!

. More cause anon! Hear ye not Aias there,

How sharp the cry that shrills from him?

. Woe! Woe!

. Madly it sounds.—Or springs it of deep grief

For proofs of madness harrowing to his eye?

. Boy, boy!

. What means he? Oh, Eurysakès!

He cries on thee. Where art thou? O my heart!