Page:Tragedies of Seneca (1907) Miller.djvu/227

Rh Of Taenara, ye floods of Lethe's stream, A soothing balm to hearts o'ercome with grief, Ye sluggish pools: take ye my impious soul And plunge me deep in your eternal woes. Now come, ye savage monsters of the deep, Whatever Proteus hides within his caves, And drown me in your pools, me who rejoice In crime so hideous. O father, thou Who ever dost too readily assent Unto my wrathful prayers, I merit not An easy death, who on my son have brought A death so strange, and scattered through the fields His mangled limbs; who, while, as austere judge, I sought to punish evil falsely charged, Have fallen myself into the pit of crime. For heaven, hell, and seas have by my sins Been peopled; now no further lot remains; Three kingdoms know me now. Was it for this That I returned? Was heaven's light restored To me that I might see two funerals, A double death? That I, bereft of wife And son, should with one torch upon the pyre Consume them both? Thou giver of the light Which has so baleful proved, O, Hercules, Take back thy boon, and give me up again To Dis; restore me to the cursed shades Whom I escaped. Oh, impious, in vain I call upon that death I left behind. Thou bloody man, well skilled in deadly arts, Who hast contrived unwonted ways of death And terrible, now deal unto thyself The fitting punishment. Let some great pine Be bent to earth and hurl thee high in air; Or let me headlong leap from Sciron's cliff. More dreadful punishments have I beheld, Which Phlegethon upon the guilty souls Encircled by his fiery stream inflicts. What suffering awaits me, and what place, Full well I know. Make room, ye guilty shades;