Page:Tragedies of Sophocles (Plumptre 1878).djvu/375

Rh As did that child of Œneus, steeped in guile,

Casting around my shoulders such a net,

Erinnys-woven, that has wrought my death;

For, cleaving to my side, it eats within,

Consuming all my flesh, and from my lungs,

Still winding in, it drains my arteries,

Drinks the warm blood, and I am done to death,

My whole frame bound with this unheard of chain;

And never yet did host on battle-plain,

Nor earth-born troop of Giants, nor the might

Of savage beasts, nor Hellas, nor the land

Of men that speak not, nor the regions vast

I traversed clearing, work a deed like this:

But she, a woman, woman-like in mind,

Not of man's strength, alone, without a sword,

She has destroyed me; and do thou, my son,

Prove thyself truly mine, and honour not

Thy mother's name henceforward more than mine;

But thou thyself with thine own hands from home

To my hands bring her, that I thus may know

If thou dost mourn my sorrow more than hers,

When thou shalt see her body maimed and shamed

In righteous judgment. Come, my son, be bold,

And pity me, in all ways pitiable,

Who, like a girl must weep and shriek in pain;

And yet there lives not one who, ere it came,

Could say that he had seen this man thus act,

But ever I bore pain without a groan;

Yet now with this I grow a woman weak.

And now, come thou, and near thy father stand,

And see by what strange chance I suffer this;