Page:Tragedies of Sophocles (Plumptre 1878).djvu/546

448 And there, hard by the crag of Sipylos,

As creeping ivy grows,

So crept the shoots of rock o'er life and breath;

And, as the rumour goes,

The showers ne'er leave her, wasting in her death,

Nor yet the drifting snows;

From weeping brows they drip on rocks beneath;

Thus God my life overthrows.

And yet a Goddess she, of birth divine,

And we frail mortals, and of mortal race;

And for weak woman it is highest grace

That fate the Gods have suffered should be thine.

Alas! ye mock at me;

Why thus laugh on?

As yet I still live here,

Not wholly gone.

Ο fellow citizens

Of city treasure-stored!

Ο streams of Dirkè's brook!

Ο grove of Thebes adored,

Where stand the chariots fair!—

I bid you witness give,

How, by my friends unwept,

I pass while yet I live,

To yonder heaped-up mound of new-made tomb;

Ah, miserable me!

Nor dwelling among men, nor with the dead,