Page:Tragedies of Euripides (Way 1894) v1.djvu/265

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O child, O child of a grief-stricken mother!

By what fate didst thou die?—in what doom dost thou

lie?—of what man wast thou slain?

I know not: on the sea-strand found I him.

Cast up by the tide, or struck down by the spear in a

blood-reddened hand

On the smooth-levelled sand?

The outsea surge in-breaking flung him up.

Woe's me, I discern it, the vision that blasted my sight!

Neither flitted unheeded that black-winged phantom of night,

Which I saw, which revealed that my son was no more of the light.

Who slew him? Canst thou, dream-arreder, tell?

'Twas my friend, 'twas my guest, 'twas the Thracian chariot-lord

To whose charge his grey father had given him to hide and to ward.

Oh, what wouldst say?—slew him to keep the gold?