Peleus.
I am naught: it is my death.
Faileth my voice, my limbs beneath me fail.
Messenger.
Hearken, if thou wouldst also avenge thy friends.
Upraise thy body, hear what deed was done. 1080
Peleus.
O Fate, how hast thou compassed me about,
The hapless, upon eld's extremest verge!
How perished he, my one son's only son?
Tell: though it blast mine ears, fain would I hear.
Messenger.
When unto Phœbus' world-famed land we came, 1085
Three radiant courses of the sun we gave
To gazing, and with beauty filled our eyes.
This bred mistrust: the folk in the God's close
That dwelt, drew into knots and muttering rings,
While Agamemnon's son passed through the town, 1090
And whispered deadly hints in each man's ear:—
"See ye yon man who prowls the God's shrines through,
Shrines full of gold, the nations' treasuries,
Who on the selfsame mission comes again
As erst he came, to rifle Phœbus' shrine?" 1095
Therefrom ill rumour surged the city through:
Their magistrates the halls of council thronged;
And the God's treasure-warders, of their part,
Set guards along the temple colonnades.
But we, yet knowing nought of this, took sheep, 1100
