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.
- Be witness she who slew the Gorgon,
- What meanest thou?
- She that on my native rocks
- makes the olive-clad hill her seat.
- Thy words to me are but as cunning riddles. I cannot read them.
- Hard by the rock with nightingales melodious, Phoebus,
- Why dost thou mention Phoebus?
- Forced on me his secret love.
- Say on; for thy story will crown me with fame and fortune.
- And as the tenth month came round I bore a child to Phoebus in secret.
- Oh! thy happy tidings, if thy story is true.
- And about thee as swaddling-clothes I fastened this my maiden work,
- the faulty efforts of my loom. But to my breast I never held thy lips, or suckled or washed thee with a mother’s care; but in a desert cave wert thou cast out
- to die, for taloned kites to rend and feast upon.
- An awful deed! O mother!
- Fear held me captive, and I cast thy life away, my child;
- I would, though loth, have slain thee too.
- Thou too wert all but slain by me most impiously.
- O the horror of all I suffered then! O the horror of what is to follow now! To and fro
- from bad to good we toss, though now the gale is shifting round. May it remain steady! the past brought sorrows enough; but now hath a fair breeze sprung up, my son, to waft us out of woe.