Page:Tragedies of Sophocles (Plumptre 1878).djvu/367

Rh No! Let her go, in God's name, and the joy

She gives my father, may it fall on her.

Chor. See, Ο ye maidens fair,

How even now there comes upon our view

The word of augury,

Sprung from high foresight in the days of old,

Which said the earing-tide

Of the twelfth year should come in cycle full,

And bring the son of Zeus a rest from toil;

And now, with prosperous breeze,

It speeds unto its end;

For how can he, who sees no more the light,

Still serve in tasks of toil?

For if the Kentaur's craft

Wraps him, resistless, in dark cloud of death,

While the thick venom melts,

Which death brought forth and spotted dragon fed,

How can he see the light

Of other day than this,

Wasting away with hydra's fearful spell,

While, still in varied forms,

The subtly working pangs

Of him, the beast with rough and swarthy mane,

Torture with fiercest heat?

And she, ill-starred one, seeing a great wrong

Rush with no lingering on her hearth and home,

From new-formed marriage ties