Ion
Euripides
Euripides. The Plays of Euripides, Translated into English Prose from the Text of Paley. Vol. I. Coleridge, Edward P., translator. London: George Bell and Sons, 1906.
- ’Tis not perfect, but a first lesson, as it were, in weaving.
- Describe its form; thou shalt not catch me thus.
- A Gorgon figures in the centre of the warp.
- Great Zeus! what fate is this that dogs my steps?
- ’Tis fringed with snakes like an aegis.
- Lo! ’tis the very robe; how true we find the voice of God!
- Ah! woven work that erst my virgin shuttle wrought.
- Is there aught beside, or stays thy lucky guessing here?
- There be serpents, too, with jaws of gold, an old-world symbol.
- [*](This line is assigned to Creusa in the Greek.) Is that Athena’s gift, bidding her race grow up under their guardianship?
- Yes, to copy our ancestor Erichthonius.
- What is their object? what the use of these golden gauds? pray, tell.
- Necklaces for the new-born babe to wear, my child.
- Lo! here they lie. Yet would I know the third sign.
- About thy brow I bound an olive-wreath that day, plucked from the tree Athena first made grow on her own rock.
- If haply that is there, it hath not lost its verdure yet, but still is fresh, for it came from the stock that grows not old.
- Mother, dearest mother, with what rapture I behold thee, as on thy cheeks, that share my joy, I press my lips!
- My son, light that in thy mother’s eye outshinest yonder sun,—
- I know the god will pardon me,—in my arms I hold thee, whom I never hoped to find, for I thought thy home was in that nether world, among the ghosts with Queen Persephone.
- Ah, dear mother mine! within thy arms I rest, the dead now brought to light, and dead no more.