Page:Tragedies of Euripides (Way 1898) v3.djvu/410

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My son, well hath Teiresias counselled thee.

Dwell with us, not without the pale of wont.

Thou'rt now in cloudland: naught thy wisdom is:

For, though no God were this,—as thou dost say,—

God be he called of thee; in glorious fraud

Be Semelê famed as mother of a God.

So upon all our house shall honour rest.

Rememberest thou Aktaion's wretched doom,

Whom the raw-ravening hounds himself had reared

Rent limb from limb in the meads, for that high boast

That Artemis in hunting he excelled?

Lest such be thy fate, let me crown thine head

With ivy: honour thou with us the God.

Hence with thine hand! Go, play the Bacchanal,

Neither besmirch me with thy folly's stain.

This seer, thy monitor in senselessness,

Will I chastise. Let some one go with speed—

(To an attendant) Thou, hie thee to his seat of augury;

Upheave with levers, hurl it to the ground;

All in confusion turn it upside down;

His holy fillets fling to wind and storm:

For, doing so, I most shall wring his heart.

And some range through the city, and track down

That girl-faced stranger, who upon our wives

Bringeth strange madness, and defiles our beds.

And if ye catch him, hale him bound with chains

Hither, that death by stoning be his meed,

And so he rue his revelry in Thebes.