Page:Tragedies of Seneca (1907) Miller.djvu/460

442 Was given, but even higher did he heap His sum of crime. Though I escaped the sea, I felt the keen sword's thrust, and, with my blood The very gods defiling, poured my soul In anguish forth. But even yet his hate Was not appeased. Against my very name The tyrant raged; my merits he obscured; My statues, my inscriptions, honors—all, On pain of death he bade to be destroyed Throughout the world—that world my hapless love, To my own direful punishment, had given To be by him, an untried boy, controlled. And now my murdered husband's angry ghost Shakes vengeful torches in my guilty face, Insistent, threat'ning; blames his death on me, His murdered son, and loud demands that now The guilty cause be given up. Have done: He shall be given, and that right speedily. Avenging furies for his impious head Are planning even now a worthy fate: Base flight and blows, and fearful sufferings, By which the raging thirst of Tantalus He shall surpass; the cruel, endless toil Of Sisyphus; the pain that Tityus feels, And the dread, racking anguish of the wheel On which Ixion's whirling limbs are stretched. Let gold and marble deck his palace walls; Let arméd guards protect him; let the world Be beggared that its treasures vast may flow Into his lap; let suppliant Parthians bend To kiss his hands, and bring rich offerings: The day and hour will come when for his crimes His guilty soul shall full atonement make, When to his enemies he shall be given, Deserted and destroyed and stripped of all. Oh, to what end my labors and my prayers? Why did thy frenzied madness, O my son, And fate impel thee to such depths of crime That e'en thy mother's wrath, whom thou didst slay,