Page:Tragedies of Euripides (Way 1896) v2.djvu/108

52

I am naught: it is my death.

Faileth my voice, my limbs beneath me fail.

Hearken, if thou wouldst also avenge thy friends.

Upraise thy body, hear what deed was done.

O Fate, how hast thou compassed me about,

The hapless, upon eld's extremest verge!

How perished he, my one son's only son?

Tell: though it blast mine ears, fain would I hear.

When unto Phœbus' world-famed land we came,

Three radiant courses of the sun we gave

To gazing, and with beauty filled our eyes.

This bred mistrust: the folk in the God's close

That dwelt, drew into knots and muttering rings,

While Agamemnon's son passed through the town,

And whispered deadly hints in each man's ear:—

"See ye yon man who prowls the God's shrines through,

Shrines full of gold, the nations' treasuries,

Who on the selfsame mission comes again

As erst he came, to rifle Phœbus' shrine?"

Therefrom ill rumour surged the city through:

Their magistrates the halls of council thronged;

And the God's treasure-warders, of their part,

Set guards along the temple colonnades.

But we, yet knowing nought of this, took sheep,