Page:The Plays of Euripides Vol. 1- Edward P. Coleridge (1910).djvu/318

290. And me. But declare more clearly how this oracle is finding its fulfilment, and say who is the child.

. Whomso thy husband first should meet as he issued from the shrine, him the god gave him for his son.

. Ah me! my fate, it seems, has doomed me to a childless life, and all forlorn am I to dwell in my halls, without an heir.

. To whom did the oracle refer? whom did our poor lady's husband meet? how and where did he see him?

. Dear mistress mine, dost know that youth that was sweeping yonder shrine? He is that son.

. Oh! for wings to cleave the liquid air beyond the land of Hellas, away to the western stars, so keen the anguish of my soul, my friends!

. Dost know the name his father gave to him, or is that left as yet unsettled and unsaid?

. He called him Ion, because he was the first to cross his path.

. Who is his mother?

. That I cannot say. But,—to tell thee all I know, old sir,—her lord is gone, with furtive step, into the hallowed tent, there to offer on this child's behalf such gifts and victims as are offered for a birth, and with his new-found son to celebrate the feast.

. Mistress mine, we are betrayed by thy husband, fellow-sufferers thou and I; 'tis a deep-laid plot to outrage us and drive us from Erechtheus' halls. And this I say not from any hatred of thy lord but because I bear thee more love than him; for he, after coming as a stranger to thy city and thy home, and wedding thee, and of thy heritage taking full possession, has been detected in a secret marriage with another woman, by whom he hath children. His secret will I now disclose; when he found thee barren, he was not content to share with thee thy hard