Page:The Plays of Euripides Vol. 1- Edward P. Coleridge (1910).djvu/133

Rh. Ay, 'tis thy character to honour thyself far more than reverence thy parents, as thou shouldst.

. Unhappy mother! son of sorrow! Heaven keep all friends of mine from bastard birth!

. Ho! servants, drag him hence! You heard my proclamation long ago condemning him to exile.

. Whoso of them doth lay a hand on me shall rue it; thyself expel me, if thy spirit move thee, from the land.

. I will, unless my word thou straight obey; no pity for thy exile steals into my heart. [Exit. . The sentence then, it seems, is passed. Ah, misery! How well I know the truth herein, but know no way to tell it! O daughter of Latona, dearest to me of all deities, partner, comrade in the chase, far from glorious Athens must I fly. Farewell, city and land of Erechtheus; farewell, Trœzen, most joyous home wherein to pass the spring of life; 'tis my last sight of thee, farewell! Come, my comrades in this land, young like me, greet me kindly and escort me forth, for never will ye behold a purer soul, for all my father's doubts. [Exit. . In very deed the thoughts I have about the gods, whenso they come into my mind, do much to soothe its grief, but though I cherish secret hopes of some great guiding will, yet am I at fault when I survey the fate and doings of the sons of men; change succeeds to change, and man's life veers and shifts in endless restlessness. Fortune grant me this, I pray, at heaven's hand,—a happy lot in life and a soul from sorrow free; opinions let me hold not too precise nor yet too hollow; but, lightly changing my habits to each morrow as it comes, may I thus attain a life of bliss! For now no more is my mind free from doubts, unlooked-for sights greet my vision; for lo! I see the morning star of Athens, eye of Hellas, driven by his father's fury to another land. Mourn, ye sands of my native shores, ye oak-groves on the hills, where with his fleet hounds he would hunt the quarry