The Cornhill Magazine/Volume 10/Issue 58/Fragment of a Greek Tragedy

by A. E. Housman

For other versions of this work, see Fragment of a Greek Tragedy.

Fragment of a Greek Tragedy.

Alcmæon. Chorus.
Cho.	O suitably-attired-in-leather-boots Head of a traveller, wherefore seeking whom Whence by what way how purposed art thou come To this well-nightingaled vicinity? My object in inquiring is to know. But if you happen to be deaf and dumb And do not understand a word I say, Then wave your hand, to signify as much.
Alc.	I journeyed hither a Bœotian road.
Cho.	Sailing on horseback, or with feet for oars?
Alc.	Plying with speed my partnership of legs.
Cho.	Beneath a shining or a rainy Zeus?
Alc.	Mud's sister, not himself, adorns my shoes.
Cho.	To learn your name would not displease me much.
Alc.	Not all that men desire do they obtain.
Cho.	Might I then hear at what your presence shoots?
Alc.	A shepherd's questioned mouth informed me that—
Cho.	What? for I know not yet what you will say.
Alc.	Nor will you ever, if you interrupt.
Cho.	Proceed, and I will hold my speechless tongue.
Alc.	—This house was Eriphyla's, no one's else.
Cho.	Nor did he shame his throat with hateful lies.
Alc.	May I then enter, passing through the door?
Cho.	Go, chase into the house a lucky foot. And, O my son, be, on the one hand, good, And do not, on the other hand, be bad; For that is very much the safest plan.
Alc.	I go into the house with heels and speed.
Chorus.
	Strophe.  In speculation I would not willingly acquire a name   For ill-digested thought;   But after pondering much To this conclusion I at last have come:   Life is uncertain.   This truth I have written deep   In my reflective midriff   On tablets not of wax, Nor with a pen did I inscribe it there, For many reasons: Life, I say, is not   A stranger to uncertainty. Not from the flight of omen-yelling fowls   This fact did I discover, Nor did the Delphic tripod bark it out,   Nor yet Dodona. Its native ingenuity sufficed   My self-taught diaphragm. Antistrophe.  Why should I mention The Inachean daughter, loved of Zeus?   Her whom of old the gods,   More provident than kind, Provided with four hoofs, two horns, one tail,   A gift not asked for,   And sent her forth to learn   The unfamiliar science O:f how to chew the cud. She therefore, all about the Argive fields, Went cropping pale green grass and nettle-tops,   Nor did they disagree with her. But yet, howe'er nutritious, such repasts   I do not hanker after: Never may Cypris for her seat select   My dappled liver! Why should I mention Io? Why indeed?   I have no notion why. Epode.  But now does my boding heart,   Unhired, unaccompanied, sing   A strain not meet for the dance.   Yea even the palace appears   To my yoke of circular eyes   (The right, nor omit I the left)   Like a slaughterhouse, so to speak,   Garnished with woolly deaths   And many shipwrecks of cows. I therefore in a Cissian strain lament;   And to the rapid, Loud, linen-tattering thumps upon my chest   Resounds in concert The battering of my unlucky head.
Eriphyla (within).	O, I am smitten with a hatchet's jaw; And that in deed and not in word alone.
Cho.	I thought I heard a sound within the house Unlike the voice of one that jumps for joy.
Eri.	He splits my skull, not in a friendly way, Once more: he purposes to kill me dead.
Cho.	I would not be reputed rash, but yet I doubt if all be gay within the house.
Eri.	O! O! another stroke! that makes the third. He stabs me to the heart against my wish.
Cho.	If that be so, thy state of health is poor; But thine arithmetic is quite correct.
*** A. E. Housman.