Page:The Plays of Euripides Vol. 1- Edward P. Coleridge (1910).djvu/336

308. Is it by his command thou keepest these relics, or why?

. Loxias put in my heart that day—

. What purpose? Oh! speak, finish thy story.

. To preserve what I had found until the present time.

. What weal or woe doth this import to me?

. Herein were laid the swaddling-clothes in which thou wert enwrapped.

. These relics thou art producing may help me to find my mother.

. Yes, for now the deity so wills it, though not before.

. Hail! thou day of visions lest to me!

. Take then the relics and seek thy mother diligently. And when thou hast traversed Asia and the bounds of Europe, thou wilt learn this for thyself; for the god's sake I reared thee, my child, and now to thee do I entrust these relics, which he willed that I should take into my safe keeping, without being bidden; why he willed it I cannot tell thee. For no living soul wist that I had them in my possession, nor yet their hiding-place. And now farewell! as a mother might her child, so I greet thee. The starting-point of thy inquiry for thy mother must be this; first, was it a Delphian maid that gave birth to thee, and exposed thee in this temple; next, was it a daughter of Hellas at all? That is all that I and Phœbus, who shares in thy lot, can do for thee. [Exit.

. Ah me! the tears stream from my eyes when I think of the day my mother bore me, as the fruit of her secret love, only to smuggle her babe away privily, without suckling it; nameless I led a servant's life in the courts of the god. His service truly was kindly, yet was my fortune