Page:Tragedies of Euripides (Way 1896) v2.djvu/114

58

No city is mine—none now!

Down, sceptre, in dust lie thou!

Thou, Daughter of Nereus, from twilight of thy sea-hall

Shalt behold me, in ruin and wrack to the earth as I fall.

What ho! what ho!

What stir in the air, what fragrance divine?

Look yonder!—O mark it, companions mine!

Some God through the stainless sky doth speed;

And the car swings low

To the plains of Phthia the nurse of the steed.

Thetis descends to the stage.

Peleus, for mine espousals' sake of old

To thee, I Thetis come from Nereus' halls.

And, first, I counsel thee, repine not thou

Overmuch for the woes that compass thee.

I too, who ought to have borne no child of sorrow,

Lost him I bare to thee, my fleetfoot son,

Achilles, who in Hellas had no peer.

Now hearken while I tell my coming's cause:

Thou to the Pythian temple journey; there

Bury thou this thy dead, Achilles' seed,

Delphi's reproach, that his tomb may proclaim

His death, his murder, by Orestes' hand.

And that war-captive dame, Andromachê,

In the Molossian land must find a home

In lawful wedlock joined to Helenus,