Rhesus

Euripides

Euripides. The Rhesus of Euripides. Translated into English rhyming verse with explanatory notes by Gilbert Murray. Murray, Gilbert, translator. London: George Allen and Company, Ltd., 1913.

  1. To bring my house due tribute, year by year,
  2. Then, never lagging, crossed the Pontus mouth,
  3. Marched by long stages through Bithynia south
  4. And here am come . . . not drunken with the feast,
  5. As thou wouldst have me be, not lulled to rest
  6. In golden chambers. In this harness hard
  7. I have borne my nights of winter storm that starred
  8. The Euxine into ice and scared the strong
  9. Paionians. Long I have been, but not too long
  10. To save thee yet. Friend, this is the tenth year
  11. Thou labourest on unceasing, with no clear
  12. Vantage; day creeps by day, and Ares throws
  13. The same red dice for thee and for thy foes.
  14. Now, hear my vow. Before one day’s eclipse
  15. I swear to break their wall, to burn their ships
  16. And slay their princes. On the second day
  17. I leave this soil and take my homeward way,
  18. Thy pains relieved. No Trojan of the land
  19. Need move, nor turn the buckler in his hand.
  20. Alone my late-comers will turn the tide