No! Let her go, in God's name, and the joy
She gives my father, may it fall on her. 820[Exit.
Stroph. I.
Chor. See, Ο ye maidens fair,
How even now there comes upon our view
The word of augury,
Sprung from high foresight in the days of old,
Which said the earing-tide
Of the twelfth year should come in cycle full,[1]
And bring the son of Zeus a rest from toil;
And now, with prosperous breeze,
It speeds unto its end;
For how can he, who sees no more the light,
Still serve in tasks of toil?830
Antistroph. I.
For if the Kentaur's craft
Wraps him, resistless, in dark cloud of death,
While the thick venom melts,
Which death brought forth and spotted dragon fed,
How can he see the light
Of other day than this,
*Wasting away with hydra's fearful spell,
While, still in varied forms,
The subtly working pangs
Of him, the beast with rough and swarthy mane,840
Torture with fiercest heat?
Stroph. II.
And she, ill-starred one, seeing a great wrong
Rush with no lingering on her hearth and home,
From new-formed marriage ties
- ↑ Deianeira had dwelt on the oracle which promised a great change after an absence of fifteen months. The Chorus looks back to an earlier prediction given twelve years before.
