Orestes
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.
- You are right; I am dead through misery, though I still gaze upon the light.
- How savage the look your unkempt hair gives you, poor wretch!
- It is not my looks, but my deeds that torture me.
- Your tearless eyes glare dreadfully!
- My body is gone, though my name has not deserted me.
- Unsightly apparition, so different from what I expected!
- Here I am, the murderer of my wretched mother.
- I have heard, spare your words; evils should be seldom spoken.
- I will be sparing; but the deity is lavish of woe in my case.
- What ails you? what is your deadly sickness?
- My conscience; I know that I am guilty of a dreadful crime.
- What do you mean? Wisdom is shown in clarity, not in obscurity.
- Grief especially has ruined me—
- Yes, she is a dreadful goddess, yet are there cures for her.
- And fits of madness, the vengeance of a mother’s blood.
- When did your madness begin? Which day was it?
- On the day I was heaping the mound over my poor mother’s grave.
- When you were in the house, or watching by the pyre?
- As I was waiting by night to gather up her bones.
- Was any one else there, to help you rise?