Page:Tragedies of Euripides (Way 1894) v1.djvu/63

Rh On me, not lightly thus shalt thou come off!

Thee I begat and nurtured, of mine house

The heir: no debt is mine to die for thee.

Not from our sires such custom we received

That sires for sons should die: no Greek law this.

Born for thyself wast thou, to fortune good

Or evil: all thy dues from us thou hast.

O'er many folk thou rulest; wide demesnes

Shall I leave thee: to me my fathers left them.

What is my wrong, my robbery of thee?

For me die thou not, I die not for thee.

Thou joy'st to see light—shall thy father joy not?

Sooth, I account our time beneath the earth

Long, and our life-space short, yet is it sweet.

Shamelessly hast thou fought against thy death:

Thy life is but transgression of thy doom

And murder of thy wife:—my cowardice!

This from thee, dastard! worsted by a woman

Who died for thee, the glorious-gallant youth!

Cunning device hast thou devised to die

Never, cajoling still wife after wife

To die for thee!—and dost revile thy friends

Who will not so—and thou the coward, thou?

Peace! e'en bethink thee, if thou lov'st thy life,

So all love theirs. Thou, if thou speakest evil

Of us, shalt hear much evil, and that true.

Ye have said too much, thou now, and he before.

Refrain, old sire, from railing on thy son.

Say on, say on; I have said: if hearing truth