Let all his weapons worthily
Of so great grief lament with him.
[To the dead children.]
But you, who in your father's praise
Can never share, who ne'er from kings
Have taken deadly recompense,
Who never in the Argive games
Have learned to bend your youthful limbs,
In wrestling and in boxing strong 1125
To strive; who have but dared as yet
To poise the slender Scythian dart
With steady hand, and pierce the stag
Who safety seeks in flight, but not
The lion fierce with tawny mane: 1130
Go to your Stygian refuge, go,
Ye guiltless shades, who on life's verge
Have by your father's mad assault
Been overwhelmed. Poor children, born
Of an ill-omened, luckless race, 1135
Fare on along your father's toilsome path,
To where the gloomy monarchs sit in wrath!
ACT V
Hercules [waking up in his right mind]: What place is this?
What quarter of the world?
Where am I? 'Neath the rising sun, or where
The frozen Bear wheels slowly overhead?
Or in that farthest land whose shores are washed 1140
By the Hesperian sea? What air is this
I breathe? What soil supports my weary frame?
For surely have I come again to earth.
[His eyes fall on his murdered children.]
Whence came those bloody corpses in my house?
Do I behold them, or not even yet
Have those infernal visions left my mind? 1145
Even on earth the ghostly shapes of death
Still flit before mine eyes. I speak with shame:
I am afraid. Some great calamity,
Some hidden ill my prescient soul forebodes.
