On the head of me blows, which she claims as her right
Who is queen o'er the dead 'neath the earth that are lying.
On thy locks let the steel of the shearing light,
Cyclopian land; break forth into crying,
For the woes of the house of thy princes sighing.
Ah pity upwelling, ah tears unavailing
For those in this hour that go forth to their dying,
Erst chieftains of Hellas's battle-might.970
Gone—gone! Lo, the lineage of Pelops hath fleeted
Into nothingness wholly; and passed away
Is the pride of a house in bliss high-seated,
By Heaven's jealousy blasted; and hungry to slay
Is the doom that the citizens spake death-dealing.
Ah, travail-worn tribes that endure but a day
Amid weeping, behold how the morrow, revealing
The death of your hopes, cometh destiny-sealing;
And to each man his several sorrows are meted,
Unto each in his turn, through the years on-stealing,980
Nor ever abide we at one stay.
O might I win to the rock 'twixt heaven[1]
And earth suspended in circles swinging,
Upborne by the golden chains scarce-clinging,
The shard from Olympus riven;
- ↑ The old poets fabled that the punishment of Tantalus, ancestor of the house of Atreus, was to lie in Tartarus beneath a rock, which at every moment seemed about to fall and crush him. Here Euripides, as some think, identifies this rock with the sun, which his master Anaxagoras described as a red-hot mass of stone hung in heaven.
