Page:Tragedies of Euripides (Way 1896) v2.djvu/95

Rh Enter Nurse.

O dear my friends, how evil in the steps

Of evil on this day still followeth!

For now my lady Hermionê within,

Deserted by her father, conscience-stricken

For that her plotted crime of slaughtering

Andromachê and her son, is fain to die,

Dreading her husband, lest for these her deeds

He drive her from yon halls with infamy,

Or lest she die, who would have slain the guiltless.

And scarce, when she essayed to hang herself,

Her watching servants stayed her, from her hand

Catching the sword and wresting it away;

With such fierce anguish seeth she her sins

Already wrought. O friends, my strength is spent

Dragging my mistress from the noose of death!

Oh, enter ye yon halls, deliver her

From death: for oft new-comers more prevail

In such an hour than one's familiar friends.

Lo, in the palace hear we servants' cries

Touching that thing whereof thou hast made report.

Hapless!—she is like to prove how bitterly

She mourns her crimes: for, fleeing forth the house

Eager to die, she hath 'scaped her servants' hands.

Hermionê rushes on to the stage.

Woe's me! with shriek on shriek

I will make of mine hair a rending, will tear with ruining fingers my red-furrowed cheek!