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.
- Phoebus forced me to a woful marriage.
- Was it then this, my daughter, that I noticed myself?
- I know not; but I will tell thee if thou speak the truth.
- At the time thou wert mourning in secret some hidden complaint?
- Yes, ’twas then this trouble happened, which now I am declaring to thee.
- How then didst conceal thy union with Apollo?
- I bore a child; hear me patiently, old friend.
- Where? and who helped thy travail? or didst thou labour all alone?
- All alone, in the cave where I became a wife.
- Where is the child? that thou mayst cease thy childless state.
- Dead, old friend, to beasts exposed.
- Dead? did Apollo, evil god, no help afford?
- None; my boy is in the halls of Hades.
- Who then exposed him? surely not thyself.
- Myself, when ’neath the gloom of night I had wrapped him in my robe.
- Did no one share thy secret of the babe’s exposure?
- Ill-fortune and secrecy alone.
- How couldst thou in the cavern leave thy babe?
- Ah! how? but still I did, with many a word of pity uttered o’er him.
- Oh for thy hard heart! Oh for the god’s, more hard than thine!