Page:Writings of Henry David Thoreau (1906) v5.djvu/405

Rh

Wishing to unite, drove her to these wanderings.

A bitter wooer didst thou find, O virgin,

For thy marriage. For the words you now have heard

Think not yet to be the prelude. Io. Ah! me! me! alas! alas!

Pr. Again dost shriek and heave a sigh? What

Wilt thou do when the remaining ills thou learn'st?

Ch. And hast thou any further suffering to tell her?

Pr. Ay, a tempestuous sea of baleful woe.

Io. What profit, then, for me to live, and not in haste

To cast myself from this rough rock,

That rushing down upon the plain I may be released

From every trouble? For better once for all to die,

Than all my days to suffer evilly.

Pr. Unhappily my trials would'st thou hear,

To whom to die has not been fated;

For this would be release from sufferings;

But now there is no end of ills lying

Before me, until Zeus falls from sovereignty.

Io. And is Zeus ever to fall from power?

Pr. Thou would'st be pleased, I think, to see this accident.

Io. How should I not, who suffer ill from Zeus?

Pr. That these things then are so, be thou assured.

Io. By what one will the tyrant's power be robbed?

Pr. Himself, by his own senseless counsels.

Io. In what way show, if there's no harm.

Pr. He will make such a marriage as one day he'll repent.

Io. Of god or mortal? If to be spoken, tell.