Lines 4226–4670

Amph. And now, advancing, hail the hearth with praise
And give the ancestral home thine eye to see!
For he himself will come, thy wife and sons
The drag-forth--slaughter--slay me too,--this king!
But, here remaining, all succeeds with thee--
Gain lost by no false step. So, this thy town
Disturb not, son, ere thou right matters here!

Her. Thus will I do, for thou say'st well; my home
Let me first enter! Since at the due time
Returning from the unsunned depths where dwells
Haides' wife Koré, let me not affront
Those gods beneath my roof, I first should hail!

Amph. For didst thou really visit Haides, son?

Her. Ay--dragged to light, too, his three-headed beast.

Amph. By fight didst conquer--or through Koré's gift?

Her. Fight: well for me, I saw the Orgies first!

Amph. And is he in Eurustheus' house, the brute?

Her. Chthonia's grove, Hermion's city, holds him now.

Amph. Does not Eurustheus know thee back on earth?

Her. No: I would come first and see matters here.

Amph. But how wast thou below ground such a time?

Her. I stopped, from Haides, bringing Theseus up.

Amph. And where is he?--bound o'er the plain for home?

Her. Gone glad to Athens--Haides' fugitive!
But, up, boys! follow father into house!
There's a far better going-in for you
Truly, than going-out was! Nay, take heart,
And let the eyes no longer run and run!
And thou, O wife, my own, collect thy soul
Nor tremble now! Leave grasping, all of you,
My garments! I'm not winged, nor fly from friends!
Ah,--
No letting go for these, who all the more
Hang to my garments! Did you foot indeed
The razor's edge? Why, then I'll carry them--
Take with my hands these small craft up, and tow
Just as a ship would. There! don't fear I shirk
My children's service! this way, men are men,
No difference! best and worst, they love their boys
After one fashion: wealth they differ in--
Some have it, others not; but each and all
Combine to form the children-loving race.

Cho. Youth is a pleasant burden to me;
But age on my head, more heavily
Than the crags of Aitna, weighs and weighs,
And darkening cloaks the lids and intercepts the rays.
Never be mine the preference
Of an Asian empire's wealth, nor yet
Of a house all gold, to youth, to youth
That's beauty, whatever the gods dispense!
Whether in wealth we joy, or fret
Paupers,--of all God's gifts most beautiful, in truth!

But miserable murderous age I hate!
Let it go to wreck, the waves adown,
Nor ever by rights plague tower or town
Where mortals bide, but still elate
With wings, on ether, precipitate,
Wander them round--nor wait!

But if the gods, to man's degree,
Had wit and wisdom, they would bring
Mankind a twofold youth, to be
Their virtue's sign-mark, all should see,
In those with whom life's winter thus grew spring.
For when they died, into the sun once more
Would they have traversed twice life's race-course o'er;
While ignobility had simply run
Existence through, nor second life begun,
And so might we discern both bad and good
As surely as the starry multitude
Is numbered by the sailors, one and one.
But now the gods by no apparent line
Limit the worthy and the base define;
Only, a certain period rounds, and so
Brings man more wealth,--but youthful vigor, no!

Well! I am not to pause
Mingling together--wine and wine in cup--
The Graces with the Muses up--
Most dulcet marriage: loosed from music's laws,
No life for me!
But where the wreaths abound, there ever may I be!
And still, an aged bard, I shout Mnemosuné--
Still chant of Herakles the triumph-chant,
Companioned by the seven-stringed tortoise-shell
And Libuan flute, and Bromios' self as well,
God of the grape, with man participant!
Not yet will we arrest their glad advance--
The Muses who so long have led me forth to dance!
A paian--hymn the Delian girls indeed,
Weaving a beauteous measure in and out
His temple-gates, Latona's goodly seed;
And paians--I too, these thy domes about,
From these gray cheeks, my king, will swan-like shout--
Old songster! Ay, in song it starts off brave--
"Zeus' son is he!" and yet, such grace of birth
Surpassing far, to man his labors gave
Existence, one calm flow without a wave,
Having destroyed the beasts, the terrors of the earth.

Luk. From out the house Amphitruon comes--in time!
For 'tis a long while now since ye bedecked
Your bodies with the dead-folks' finery.
But quick! the boys and wife of Herakles--
Bid them appear outside this house, keep pact
To die, and need no bidding but your own!

Amph. King! you press hard on me sore-pressed enough,
And give me scorn--beside my dead ones here.
Meet in such matters were it, though you reign,
To temper zeal with moderation. Since
You do impose on us the need to die--
Needs must we love our lot, obey your will.

Luk. Where's Megara, then? Alkmené's grandsons, where?

Amph. She, I think,--as one figures from outside,--

Luk. Well, this same thinking,--what affords its ground?

Amph. --Sits suppliant on the holy altar-steps,--

Luk. Idly indeed a suppliant to save life!

Amph. --And calls on her dead husband, vainly too!

Luk. For he's not come, nor ever will arrive.

Amph. Never--at least, if no god raise him up.

Luk. Go to her, and conduct her from the house!

Amph. I should partake the murder, doing that.

Luk. We,--since thou hast a scruple in the case,--
Outside of fears, we shall march forth these lads,
Mother and all. Here, follow me, my folk--
And gladly so remove what stops our toils!

Amph. Thou--go then! March where needs must! What remains--
Perhaps concerns another. Doing ill,
Expect some ill be done thee!
Ha, old friends!
On he strides beautifully! in the toils
O' the net, where swords spring forth, will he be fast--
Minded to kill his neighbors--the arch-knave!
I go, too--I must see the falling corpse!
For he has sweets to give--a dying man,
Your foe, that pays the price of deeds he did.

Cho. Troubles are over! He the great king once,
Turns the point, tends for Haides, goal of life!
O justice, and the gods' back-flowing fate!

Amph. Thou art come, late indeed, where death pays crime--
These insults heaped on better than thyself!

Cho. Joy gives this outburst to my tears! Again
Come round those deeds, his doing, which of old
He never dreamed himself was to endure--
King of the country! But enough, old man!
Indoors, now, let us see how matters stand--
If somebody be faring as I wish!

Luk. Ah me--me!

Cho. This strikes the keynote--music to my mind,
Merry i' the household! Death takes up the tune!
The king gives voice, groans murder's prelude well!

Luk. O all the land of Kadmos! slain by guile!

Cho. Ay, for who slew first? Paying back thy due,
Resign thee! make, for deeds done, mere amends!
Who was it grazed the gods through lawlessness--
Mortal himself, threw up his fools'-conceit
Against the blessed heavenly ones--as though
Gods had no power? Old friends, the impious man
Exists not any more! The house is mute.
Turn we to song and dance! For, those I love,
Those I wish well to, well fare they, to wish!

Dances, dances and banqueting
To Thebes, the sacred city through,
Are a care! for, change and change
Of tears to laughter, old to new,
Our lays, glad birth, they bring, they bring!
He is gone and past, the mighty king!
And the old one reigns, returned--Oh, strange!
From the Acherontian harbor too!
Advent of hope, beyond thought's widest range!
To the gods, the gods, are crimes a care,
And they watch our virtue, well aware
That gold and that prosperity drive man
Out of his mind--those charioteers who hale
Might-without-right behind them: face who can
Fortune's reverse which time prepares, nor quail?
--He who evades law and in lawlessness
Delights him,--he has broken down his trust--
The chariot, riches haled--now blackening in the dust!

Ismenos, go thou garlanded!
Break into dance, ye ways, the polished bed
O' the seven-gated city! Dirké, thou
Fair-flowing, with the Asopiad sisters all,
Leave your sire's stream, attend the festival
Of Herakles, one choir of nymphs, sing triumph now!
O woody rock of Puthios and each home
O the Helikonian Muses, ye shall come
With joyous shouting to my walls, my town
Where saw the light that Spartan race, those "Sown,"
Brazen-shield-bearing chiefs, whereof the band
With children's children renovates our land,
To Thebes a sacred light!
O combination of the marriage rite--
Bed of the mortal-born and Zeus, who couched
Beside the nymph of Perseus' progeny!
For credible, past hope, becomes to me
That nuptial story long ago avouched,
O Zeus! and time has turned the dark to bright,
And made one blaze of truth the Herakleidan might--
His, who emerged from earth's pavilion, left
Plouton's abode, the nether palace-cleft,
Thou wast the lord that nature gave me--not
That baseness born and bred--my king, by lot!
--Baseness made plain to all, who now regard
The match of sword with sword in fight,--
If to the gods the Just and Right
Still pleasing be, still claim the palm's award.

Horror!
Are we come to the selfsame passion of fear,
Old friends?--such a phantasm fronts me here
Visible over the palace-roof!
In flight, in flight, the laggard limb
Bestir! and haste aloof
From that on the roof there--grand and grim!
O Paian, king!
Be thou my safeguard from the woeful thing!

Iris. Courage, old men! beholding here--Night's birth--
Madness, and me the handmaid of the gods,
Iris: since to your town we come, no plague--
Wage war against the house of but one man
From Zeus and from Alkmené sprung, they say.
Now, till he made an end of bitter toils,
Fate kept him safe, nor did his father Zeus
Let us once hurt him, Heré nor myself.
But, since he has toiled through Eurustheus' task,
Heré desires to fix fresh blood on him--
Slaying his children: I desire it too.

Up then, collecting the unsoftened heart,
Unwedded virgin of black Night! Drive, drag
Frenzy upon the man here--whirls of brain
Big with child-murder, while his feet leap gay!
Let go the bloody cable its whole length!
So that,--when o'er the Acherousian ford
He has sent floating, by self-homicide,
His beautiful boy-garland,--he may know
First, Heré's anger, what it is to him,
And then learn mine. The gods are vile indeed
And mortal matters vast, if he 'scape free!

Madness. Certes, from well-born sire and mother too
Had I my birth, whose blood is Night's and Heaven's;
But here's my glory,--not to grudge the good!
Nor love I raids against the friends of man.
I wish, then, to persuade,--before I see
You stumbling, you and Heré! trust my words!
This man, the house of whom ye hound me to,
Is not unfamed on earth nor gods among;
Since, having quelled waste land and savage sea,
He alone raised again the falling rights
Of gods--gone ruinous through impious men.
Desire no mighty mischief, I advise!

Iris. Give thou no thought to Heré's faulty schemes!

Mad. Changing her step from faulty to fault-free!

Iris. Not to be wise, did Zeus' wife send thee here!

Mad. Sun, thee I cite to witness--doing what I loathe to do!
But since indeed to Heré and thyself I must subserve.
And follow you quick, with a whiz, as the hounds a-hunt with the
huntsman,
--Go I will! and neither the sea, as it groans with its waves so
furiously,
Nor earthquake, no, nor the bolt of thunder gasping out heaven's
labor-throe,
Shall cover the ground as I, at a bound, rush into the bosom of
Herakles!
And home I scatter, and house I batter,
Having first of all made the children fall,--
And he who felled them is never to know
He gave birth to each child that received the blow,
Till the Madness, I am, have let him go!

Ha, behold, already he rocks his head--he is off from the
starting-place!
Not a word, as he rolls his frightful orbs, from their sockets
wrenched in the ghastly race!
And the breathings of him he tempers and times no more than a bull
in act to toss,
And hideously he bellows invoking the Keres, daughters of Tartaros.
Ay, and I soon will dance thee madder, and pipe thee quite out of
thy mind with fear!
So, up with the famous foot, thou Iris, march to Olumpos, leave me
here!
Me and mine, who now combine, in the dreadful shape no mortal sees,
And now are about to pass, from without, inside of the home of
Herakles!

Cho. Otototoi,--groan! Away is mown
Thy flower, Zeus' offspring, City!
Unhappy Hellas, who dost cast (the pity!)
Who worked thee all the good,
Away from thee,--destroyest in a mood
Of madness him, to death whom pipings dance!
There goes she, in her chariot--groans, her brood--
And gives her team the goad, as though adrift
For doom, Night's Gorgon, Madness, she whose glance
Turns man to marble! with what hissings lift
Their hundred heads the snakes, her head's inheritance!
Quick has the god changed fortune: through their sire
Quick will the children, that he saved, expire!
O miserable me! O Zeus! thy child--
Childless himself--soon vengeance, hunger-wild,
Craving for punishment, will lay how low--
Loaded with many a woe!

O palace-roofs! your courts about,
A measure begins all unrejoiced
By the tympanies and the thyrsos hoist
Of the Bromian revel-rout!
O ye domes! and the measure proceeds
For blood, not such as the cluster bleeds
Of the Dionusian pouring-out!

Break forth, fly, children! fatal this--
Fatal the lay that is piped, I wis!
Ay, for he hunts a children-chase--
Never shall Madness lead her revel
And leave no trace in the dwelling-place!
Ai ai, because of the evil!
Ai ai, the old man--how I groan
For the father, and not the father alone!
She who was nurse of his children,--small
Her gain that they ever were born at all!

See! See!
A whirlwind shakes hither and thither
The house--the roof falls in together!
Ha, ha! what dost thou, son of Zeus?
A trouble of Tartaros broke loose,
Such as once Pallas on the Titan thundered,
Thou sendest on thy domes, roof-shattered and wall-sundered!

Messenger. O bodies white with age!--

Cho. What cry, to me--
What, dost thou call with?

Mes. There 's a curse indoors!

Cho. I shall not bring a prophet: you suffice!

Mes. Dead are the children!

Cho. Ai ai!

Mes. Groan! for, groans
Suit well the subject! Dire the children's death,
Dire too the parent's hands that dealt the fate.
No one could tell worse woe than we have borne!

Cho. How dost thou that same curse--curse, cause for groan
The father's on the children, make appear?
Tell in what matter they were hurled from heaven
Against the house--these evils; and recount
The children's hapless fate, O Messenger!

Mes. The victims were before the hearth of Zeus
A household-expiation: since the king
O' the country, Herakles had killed and cast
From out the dwelling; and a beauteous choir
Of boys stood by his sire, too, and his wife.
And now the basket had been carried round
The altar in a circle, and we used
The consecrated speech. Alkmené's son--
Just as he was about, in his right hand,
To bear the torch, that he might dip into
The cleansing-water--came to a stand-still;
And, as their father yet delayed, his boys
Had their eyes on him. But he was himself
No longer: lost in rollings of the eyes;
Out-thrusting eyes--their very roots--like blood!
Froth he dropped down his bushy-bearded cheek,
And said--together with a madman's laugh--
"Father! why sacrifice, before I slay
Eurustheus? why have twice the lustral fire,
And double pains, when 't is permitted me
To end, with one good hand-sweep, matters here?
Then,--when I hither bring Eurustheus' head,--
Then for these just slain, wash hands once for all!
Now,--cast drink-offerings forth, throw baskets down!
Who gives me bow and arrows, who my club?
I go to that Mukenai! One must match
Crowbars and mattocks, so that--those sunk stones
The Kuklops squared with picks and plumb-line red.
I, with my bent steel, may o'ertumble town!"
Which said, he goes and--with no car to have--
Affirms he has one! mounts the chariot-board,
And strikes, as having really goad in hand!
And two ways laughed the servants--laugh with awe;
And one said, as each met the other's stare,
"Playing us boys' tricks? or is master mad?"
But up he climbs, and down along the roof,
And, dropping into the men's place, maintains
He 's come to Nisos city, when he 's come
Only inside his own house! then reclines
On floor, for couch, and, as arrived indeed,
Makes himself supper; goes through some brief stay,
Then says he 's traversing the forest-flats
Of Isthmos; thereupon lays body bare
Of bucklings, and begins a contest with
--No one! and is proclaimed the conqueror--
He by himself--having called out to hear
--Nobody! Then, if you will take his word,
Blaring against Eurustheus horribly,
He 's at Mukenai. But his father laid
Hold of the strong hand and addressed him thus:
"O son, what ails thee? Of what sort is this
Extravagance? Has not some murder-craze,
Bred of those corpses thou didst just dispatch,
Danced thee drunk?" But he,--taking him to crouch,
Eurustheus' sire, that apprehensive touched
His hand, a suppliant,--pushes him aside,
Gets ready quiver, and bends low against
His children--thinking them Eurustheus' boys
He means to slay. They, horrified with fear,
Rushed here and there,--this child, into the robes
O' the wretched mother,--this, beneath the shade
O' the column,--and this other, like a bird,
Cowered at the altar-foot. The mother shrieks,
"Parent--what dost thou?--kill thy children?" So
Shriek the old sire and crowd of servitors.
But he, outwinding him, as round about
The column ran the boy,--a horrid whirl
O' the lathe his foot described!--stands opposite,
Strikes through the liver! and supine the boy
Bedews the stone shafts, breathing out his life.
But "Victory" he shouted! boasted thus:
"Well, this one nestling of Eurustheus--dead--
Falls by me, pays back the paternal hate!"
Then bends bow on another who was crouched
At base of altar--overlooked, he thought--
And now prevents him, falls at father's knee,
Throwing up hand to beard and cheek above.
"O dearest!" cries he, "father, kill me not!
Yours, I am--your boy: not Eurustheus' boy
You kill now!" But he, rolling the wild eye
Of Gorgon,--as the boy stood all too close
For deadly bowshot,--mimicry of smith
Who batters red-hot iron,--hand o'er head
Heaving his club, on the boy's yellow hair
Hurls it and breaks the bone. This second caught,--
He goes, would slay the third, one sacrifice
He and the couple; but, beforehand here,
The miserable mother catches up,
Carries him inside house and bars the gate.
Then he, as he were at those Kuklops' work,
Digs at, heaves doors up, wrenches doorposts out,
Lays wife and child low with the selfsame shaft.
And this done, at the old man's death he drives;
But there came, as it seemed to us who saw,
A statue--Pallas with the crested head,
Swinging her spear--and threw a stone which smote
Herakles' breast and stayed his slaughter-rage,
And sent him safe to sleep. He falls to ground--
Striking against the column with his back--
Column which, with the falling of the roof,
Broken in two, lay by the altar-base.
And we, foot-free now from our several flights,
Along with the old man, we fastened bonds
Of rope-noose to the column, so that he,
Ceasing from sleep, might not go adding deeds
To deeds done. And he sleeps a sleep, poor wretch,
No gift of any god! since he has slain
Children and wife. For me, I do not know
What mortal has more misery to bear.