Page:The Plays of Euripides Vol. 1- Edward P. Coleridge (1910).djvu/100

72. One last fond kiss, ah me! I fain would on their lips imprint.

. Embraces now, and fond farewells for them but then a cold repulse!

. By heaven I do adjure thee, let me touch their tender skin.

. No, no! in vain this word has sped its flight.

. O Zeus, dost hear how I am driven hence; dost mark the treatment I receive from this she-lion, fell murderess of her young? Yet so far as I may and can, I raise for them a dirge, and do adjure the gods to witness how thou hast slain my sons, and wilt not suffer me to embrace or bury their dead bodies. Would I had never begotten them to see thee slay them after all!

. Many a fate doth Zeus dispense, high on his Olympian throne; oft do the gods bring things to pass beyond man's expectation; that, which we thought would be, is not fulfilled, while for the unlooked-for god finds out a way; and such hath been the issue of this matter.