Page:Tragedies of Euripides (Way 1896) v2.djvu/451

I might tell of the sacrifice done to the Muses,^[1] the blood of a son
Of Zeus, who of Proknê was slaughtered, the only child of her womb:—
But thou, who art father of children three, O unhappiest one,
Together hast murdered them all, driven on by thy madness's doom!
With what cry shall I wail thee, what sighing,
What chant as for dead that are lying in Hades, what dirge of the tomb?
Alas! O see
How the bolts slide back, and asunder fall
The stately doors of the palace-hall. 1030
The palace is thrown open, and the scene within disclosed.
Ah me! ah me!
Lo there the children—ah misery!
At the feet of their wretched father they lie:
And from murder of sons he is resting in awful sleep;
And around him the bonds with manifold fastenings keep
The body of Herakles in ward,
And lashed to the palace's pillars of stone are the coils of the cord.
And that old sire, as bird that maketh moan
O'er fledgling brood, with footsteps eld-fordone 1040
Treading a bitter pathway, cometh on.