Page:The poems of Gaius Valerius Catullus - Francis Warre Cornish.djvu/109



'my eyes shall not grow faint in death, nor shall the sense fail from my wearied body, before I demand ' from the gods just vengeance for my betrayal, and ' call upon the faith of the heavenly ones in my last ' hour. Therefore, O ye that visit the deeds of men 'with vengeful pains, ye Eumenides, whose foreheads 'bound with snaky hair bear on their front the ' wrath which breathes from your breast, hither, ' hither haste, hear my complaints which I (ah, 'unhappy!) utter from my inmost heart perforce, 'helpless, burning, blinded with raging frenzy. For 'since my woes come truthfully from the depths 'of my heart, suffer not ye my grief to come to ' nothing: but even as Theseus left me desolate, ' so, goddesses, may he bring ruin on himself and ' his own! '

When she had poured forth these words from her sad breast, earnestly demanding vengeance for cruel deeds; the Lord of the heavenly ones bowed assent with sovereign nod, and with that gesture trembled the earth and stormy seas, and the heavens shook the quivering stars. But Theseus himself, darkling in his thoughts with blind dimness, let slip from his forgetful mind all the biddings which formerly he had held firm with constant heart, and raised not the welcome sign to his mourning father, nor showed that he was safely sighting the Erechthean harbour. For they say that erewhile, when Aegeus was trusting his son to the winds, as with his fleet he left the walls of the goddess, he embraced the youth and gave him this charge: ' My son, my only ' son, dearer to me than all my length of days, re- ' stored to me but now in the last end of old age, 'my son, whom I perforce let go forth to doubtful \6 'hazards, — since my fortune and thy burning valour