Page:Tragedies of Seneca (1907) Miller.djvu/470

452 By him beloved, and in her son secure? Yet she at last was subject to a slave, And fell beneath a brutal soldier's sword. For what exalted heights of royalty Might not our Nero's mother once have hoped? Mishandled first by vulgar sailors' hands Then slain and mangled by the bungling sword, She lay the victim of her cruel son. Octavia: Me, too, the tyrant to the world of shades Is sending. Why delay? Then speed my death, For fate hath made me subject to your power. I pray the heavenly gods—what wouldst thou, fool? Pray not to gods who show their scorn of thee. But, O ye gods of hell, ye furies dire, Who work your vengeance on the crimes of men, And thou, my father's restless spirit, come And bring this tyrant fitting punishment. [To her guards.] The death you threaten has no terrors now For me. Go, set your ship in readiness, Unfurl your sails, and let your pilot seek The barren shores of Pandataria. [Exit Octavia with guards.] Chorus: Ye gentle breezes and ye zephyrs mild, Which once from savage Dian's altar bore Atrides' daughter in a cloud concealed, This child of ours, Octavia too, we pray, Bear far away from these too cruel woes, And set her in the fane of Trivia. For Aulis is more merciful than Rome, The savage Taurian land more mild than this: There hapless strangers to their gods they feed, But Rome delights to see her children bleed.