Page:Tragedies of Sophocles (Plumptre 1878).djvu/376

---

---

For I will show what lies below these wraps:
Come, all of you, behold this wretched frame,
Behold me, how I suffer piteously.1080
Ah, miserable me!
Again the dart of pain is fever-hot,
And rushes through my breast. This cursed ill,
So seems it, will not leave me unassailed,
Still eating on. Ο Hades, king, receive me;
Smite me, Ο flash of Zeus; yea, shake, Ο king,
Yea, father, dart thy thunderbolts on me;
For now once more it eats, it grows, it spreads.
Ο hands, my hands! Ο back, and chest, and arms1090
That once were dear, there lie ye now who once
Subdued by force the Nemean habitant.
The lion, troubler of the flocks and herds,
A monster none might war with or approach;
And that Lernæan hydra, and the host
Of Kentaurs, all of double form, half-horse,
Fearful, and fierce, and lawless, strong and proud,
The beast of Erymanthos, and the dog
Of deepest Hades, with the triple head,
A portent awful; and the dreaded shape
Of that fierce serpent, and the dragon guard
That at the world's end watched the golden fruit;1100
And thousand other toils I tasted of,
And no man raised his trophies over me;
But now thus jointless, worn to rags and shreds,
By plague obscure I waste away in woe,
Who from a noble mother took my name,
Reputed son of Zeus the star-girt king:
But know this well, that though I be as nought,
As nothing creep, yet, even as I am,
I will smite her who brought me to this pass.
Let her but come that she may learn, and tell1110