Page:Tragedies of Sophocles (Plumptre 1878).djvu/376

278 For I will show what lies below these wraps:

Come, all of you, behold this wretched frame,

Behold me, how I suffer piteously.

Ah, miserable me!

Again the dart of pain is fever-hot,

And rushes through my breast. This cursed ill,

So seems it, will not leave me unassailed,

Still eating on. Ο Hades, king, receive me;

Smite me, Ο flash of Zeus; yea, shake, Ο king,

Yea, father, dart thy thunderbolts on me;

For now once more it eats, it grows, it spreads.

Ο hands, my hands! Ο back, and chest, and arms

That once were dear, there lie ye now who once

Subdued by force the Nemean habitant.

The lion, troubler of the flocks and herds,

A monster none might war with or approach;

And that Lernæan hydra, and the host

Of Kentaurs, all of double form, half-horse,

Fearful, and fierce, and lawless, strong and proud,

The beast of Erymanthos, and the dog

Of deepest Hades, with the triple head,

A portent awful; and the dreaded shape

Of that fierce serpent, and the dragon guard

That at the world's end watched the golden fruit;

And thousand other toils I tasted of,

And no man raised his trophies over me;

But now thus jointless, worn to rags and shreds,

By plague obscure I waste away in woe,

Who from a noble mother took my name,

Reputed son of Zeus the star-girt king:

But know this well, that though I be as nought,

As nothing creep, yet, even as I am,

I will smite her who brought me to this pass.

Let her but come that she may learn, and tell