Page:Tragedies of Sophocles (Plumptre 1878).djvu/286

188 And still I bear an endless doom of woe.

And he, alas! forgets

All he has met with, all that I had taught.

What message goes from me

That is not mocked? for still he yearns to come,

And yet he deigneth not,

Yearn though he may, to show himself to us.

Chor. Take heart, my child, take heart;

Mighty in heaven He dwells,

Zeus, seeing, guiding all:

Resign to Him the wrath that vexes sore.

And as for them, the foes whom thou dost hate,

Nor grieve too much, nor yet forget them quite;

Time is a calm and patient Deity:

For neither he who dwells

Where oxen graze on far Krisæan shore,

The boy who sprang from Agamemnon's loins,

Lives heedless of thy woe;

Nor yet the God who reigns

By Acheron's dark shore.

Elec. And yet the larger portion of my life

Is gone without a hope,

And I am all too weak,

Who waste away in orphaned loneliness,

Whom no dear husband loves,

But, like an alien stranger in the house,

I do my task unmeet,

And tend the chambers where my father dwelt,

In this unseemly guise,

And stand at tables all too poorly filled.

Chor. Sad was his voice in that his homeward march,

And sad when that sharp blow

(There in his father's couch,)

Of brazen axe went straight;