Page:Tragedies of Seneca (1907) Miller.djvu/175

Rh Let all his weapons worthily Of so great grief lament with him. [To the dead children.] But you, who in your father's praise Can never share, who ne'er from kings Have taken deadly recompense, Who never in the Argive games Have learned to bend your youthful limbs, In wrestling and in boxing strong To strive; who have but dared as yet To poise the slender Scythian dart With steady hand, and pierce the stag Who safety seeks in flight, but not The lion fierce with tawny mane: Go to your Stygian refuge, go, Ye guiltless shades, who on life's verge Have by your father's mad assault Been overwhelmed. Poor children, born Of an ill-omened, luckless race,

Fare on along your father's toilsome path, To where the gloomy monarchs sit in wrath!

Hercules [waking up in his right mind]: What place is this? What quarter of the world? Where am I? 'Neath the rising sun, or where The frozen Bear wheels slowly overhead? Or in that farthest land whose shores are washed By the Hesperian sea? What air is this I breathe? What soil supports my weary frame? For surely have I come again to earth. [His eyes fall on his murdered children.] Whence came those bloody corpses in my house? Do I behold them, or not even yet Have those infernal visions left my mind? Even on earth the ghostly shapes of death Still flit before mine eyes. I speak with shame: I am afraid. Some great calamity, Some hidden ill my prescient soul forebodes.