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Of Taenara, ye floods of Lethe's stream,
A soothing balm to hearts o'ercome with grief,
Ye sluggish pools: take ye my impious soul
And plunge me deep in your eternal woes.
Now come, ye savage monsters of the deep,
Whatever Proteus hides within his caves, 1205
And drown me in your pools, me who rejoice
In crime so hideous. O father, thou
Who ever dost too readily assent
Unto my wrathful prayers, I merit not
An easy death, who on my son have brought
A death so strange, and scattered through the fields
His mangled limbs; who, while, as austere judge,
I sought to punish evil falsely charged, 1210
Have fallen myself into the pit of crime.
For heaven, hell, and seas have by my sins
Been peopled; now no further lot remains;
Three kingdoms know me now. Was it for this
That I returned? Was heaven's light restored
To me that I might see two funerals,
A double death? That I, bereft of wife 1215
And son, should with one torch upon the pyre
Consume them both? Thou giver of the light
Which has so baleful proved, O, Hercules,
Take back thy boon, and give me up again
To Dis; restore me to the cursed shades
Whom I escaped. Oh, impious, in vain
I call upon that death I left behind. 1220
Thou bloody man, well skilled in deadly arts,
Who hast contrived unwonted ways of death
And terrible, now deal unto thyself
The fitting punishment. Let some great pine
Be bent to earth and hurl thee high in air;
Or let me headlong leap from Sciron's cliff. 1225
More dreadful punishments have I beheld,
Which Phlegethon upon the guilty souls
Encircled by his fiery stream inflicts.
What suffering awaits me, and what place,
Full well I know. Make room, ye guilty shades;