Page:Tragedies of Seneca (1907) Miller.djvu/460

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Was given, but even higher did he heap605
His sum of crime. Though I escaped the sea,
I felt the keen sword's thrust, and, with my blood
The very gods defiling, poured my soul
In anguish forth. But even yet his hate
Was not appeased. Against my very name
The tyrant raged; my merits he obscured;610
My statues, my inscriptions, honors—all,
On pain of death he bade to be destroyed
Throughout the world—that world my hapless love,
To my own direful punishment, had given
To be by him, an untried boy, controlled.
And now my murdered husband's angry ghost
Shakes vengeful torches in my guilty face,615
Insistent, threat'ning; blames his death on me,
His murdered son, and loud demands that now
The guilty cause be given up. Have done:
He shall be given, and that right speedily.
Avenging furies for his impious head
Are planning even now a worthy fate:620
Base flight and blows, and fearful sufferings,
By which the raging thirst of Tantalus
He shall surpass; the cruel, endless toil
Of Sisyphus; the pain that Tityus feels,
And the dread, racking anguish of the wheel
On which Ixion's whirling limbs are stretched.
Let gold and marble deck his palace walls;
Let arméd guards protect him; let the world625
Be beggared that its treasures vast may flow
Into his lap; let suppliant Parthians bend
To kiss his hands, and bring rich offerings:
The day and hour will come when for his crimes
His guilty soul shall full atonement make,630
When to his enemies he shall be given,
Deserted and destroyed and stripped of all.
Oh, to what end my labors and my prayers?
Why did thy frenzied madness, O my son,
And fate impel thee to such depths of crime
That e'en thy mother's wrath, whom thou didst slay,635