Page:Tragedies of Euripides (Way 1898) v3.djvu/277

Rh For this land's king shall in short space be here

To ask if yet this sacrifice be done.

O Goddess-queen, who erst by Aulis' clefts

Didst save me from my sire's dread murderous hand,

Save me now too with these; else Loxias' words

Through thee shall be no more believed of men.

But graciously come forth this barbarous land

To Athens. It beseems thee not to dwell

Here, when so blest a city may be thine.

Iphigeneia, Orestes, and Pylades enter the temple.

Thou bird, who by scaurs o'er the sea-breakers leaning

Ever chantest thy song,

O Halcyon, thy burden of sorrow, whose meaning

To the wise doth belong,

Who discern that for aye on thy mate thou art crying,

I lift up a dirge to thy dirges replying—

Ah, thy pinions I have not!—for Hellas sighing,

For the blithe city-throng;

For that happier Artemis sighing, who dwelleth

By the Cynthian Hill,

By the feathery palm, by the shoot that swelleth

When the bay-buds fill,

By the pale-green sacred olive that aided

Leto, whose travail the dear boughs shaded,

By the lake with the circling ripples braided,