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.
- Forever to the sunlight. When we seek
- Our vengeance, we shall go not to the Greek.
- What stranger in that darkness could have trod
- Straight to where Rhesus lay—unless some God
- Pointed his path? They knew not, whispered not,
- Rhesus had ever come. . . . ’Tis all a plot.
- Good allies I have had since first the Greek
- Set foot in Troy, and never heard them speak
- Complaint of Hector. Thou wilt be the first.
- I have not, by God’s mercy, such a thirst
- For horses as to murder for their sake.
- Odysseus! Yet again Odysseus! Take
- All the Greek armies, is there one but he
- Could have devised, or dared, this devilry?
- I fear him; yea, fear in mine own despite,
- Lest Dolon may have crossed him in the night
- And perished; ’tis so long he cometh not.
- I know not who Odysseus is, nor what.
- I know it was no Greek that wounded us.
- To think thus pleasures thee? Well, have it thus.