Andromache
Euripides
Euripides. The Plays of Euripides, Translated into English Prose from the Text of Paley. Vol. II. Coleridge, Edward P., translator. London: George Bell and Sons, 1891.
- My child, what wilt thou do? Wilt thou disfigure thyself?
- Ah me! ah me!
- Begone, thou fine-spun veil! float from my head away!
- Daughter, cover up thy bosom, fasten thy robe.
- Why should I cover it?
- My crimes against my lord are manifest and clear, they cannot be hidden.
- Art so grieved at having devised thy rival’s death?
- Indeed I am; I deeply mourn my fatal deeds of daring; alas! I am now accursed in all men’s eyes!
- Thy husband will pardon thee this error.
- Oh! why didst thou hunt me to snatch away my sword? Give, oh! give it back, dear nurse, that I may thrust it through my heart. Why dost thou prevent me hanging myself?
- What! was I to let thy madness lead thee on to death?
- Ah me, my destiny! Where can I find some friendly fire? To what rocky height can I climb above the sea or ’mid some wooded mountain glen,
- there to die and trouble but the dead?
- Why vex thyself thus? on all of us sooner or later heaven’s visitation comes.
- Thou hast left me, O my father,
- left me like a stranded bark, all alone, without an oar. My lord will surely slay me; no home is mine henceforth beneath my husband’s roof. What god is there to whose statue I can as a suppliant haste?
- or shall I throw myself in slavish wise at slavish knees? Would I could speed[*](Reading ἀερθείην with Seidler.) away from Phthia’s land on bird’s dark pinion, or like that pine-built ship,[*](Argo, in quest of the Golden Fleece.)