Page:Tragedies of Euripides (Way 1896) v2.djvu/224

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168
EURIPIDES.

Poor child, how sadly thine ancestral walls,
Bulwark of Loxias,[1] from thine head have shorn
The curls that oft thy mother softly smoothed 1175
And kissed, wherefrom through shattered bones forth grins
Murder—a ghastliness I cannot speak!
O hands, how sweet the likeness to your sire
Ye keep!—limp in your sockets, lo, ye lie.
Dear lips, that babbled many a child-boast once, 1180
Ye are dead!—'Twas false, when, bounding to my robes,
"Mother," thou saidst, "full many a curl I'll shear
For thee, and troops of friends unto thy tomb
Will lead, to cry the loving last farewell."
Not I of thee, but thou, the young, of me,— 1185
Old, homeless, childless,—wretched corpse, art buried.
Ah me, the kisses, and my nursing-cares,
Thy love-watched slumbers,[2]—gone! What word, ah what,
Shall bard inscribe of thee upon thy tomb?
"This child the Argives murdered in time past 1190
Through fear"—the inscription shall be Hellas' shame!
Yet thou, of thy sire's wealth though nought thou hast,
Shalt in thy burial have his brazen targe.
Ah shield that keptest Hector's goodly arm
Safe, thine heroic warder hast thou lost! 1195
How dear his imprint on thine handle lies!
Dear stains of sweat upon thy shapely rim,
Which oft mid battle's toil would Hector drip

  1. ↑ Built by Apollo.
  2. ↑ Or, reading ὕπνοι τ’ἄυπνοι,—"my broken slumbers"—disturbed by infant cries. Cf. Aeschylus, Cho. 751. Tyrrell suggests ἄυπνοί τε κλῖναι, "the sleepless nights."
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