Page:Sophocles - Seven Plays, 1900.djvu/94

60 Thou, Salamis, art planted evermore,

Happy amid the wandering billows’ roar;

While I—ah, woe the while!—this weary time,

By the green wold where flocks from Ida stray,

Lie worn with fruitless hours of wasted prime,

Hoping—ah, cheerless hope!—to win my way

Where Hades’ horrid gloom shall hide me from the day.

Alas is with me, yea, but crouching low,

Where Heaven-sent madness haunts his overthrow,

Beyond my cure or tendance: woful plight!

Whom thou, erewhile, to head the impetuous fight,

Sent’st forth, thy conquering champion. Now he feeds

His spirit on lone paths, and on us brings

Deep sorrow; and all his former peerless deeds

Of prowess fall like unremembered things

From Atreus’ loveless brood, this caitiff brace of kings.

Ah! when his mother, full of days and bowed

With hoary eld, shall hear his ruined mind,

How will she mourn aloud!

Not like the warbler of the dale,

The bird of piteous wail,

But in shrill strains far borne upon the wind,

While on the withered breast and thin white hair

Falls the resounding blow, the rending of despair.

Best hid in death were he whom madness drives

Remediless; if, through his father’s race

Born to the noblest place

Among the war-worn Greeks, he lives

By his own light no more,

Self-aliened from the self he knew before.

Oh, hapless sire, what woe thine ear shall wound!

One that of all thy line no life save this hath found.

. What change will never-terminable Time

Not heave to light, what hide not from the day?

What chance shall win men’s marvel? Mightiest oaths