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. Home, home! To die at home and rest my head!
HECTOR.
  1. Nay, die not, friend. We have enough of dead.
THRACIAN.
  1. How can I live? Lost, and my master slain.
HECTOR.
  1. My house will shelter thee and heal thy pain.
THRACIAN.
  1. Thy house? Will murderers’ nursing give me peace?
HECTOR.
  1. Still the same tale! This man will never cease.
THRACIAN.
  1. My curse rest—not on Hector, but on those
  2. Who stabbed us, as thou say’st.—Ah, Justice knows![*](P. 48, 1. 876, Justice knows.]—It is a clever touch to leave the Thracian still only half-convinced and grumbling.)
HECTOR.
  1. There, lift him.—Bear him to my house. Take pains,
  2. If care can do it, that the man complains
  3. No more of Troy.—Ye others, bear withal
  4. To Priam and the Elders of the Wall
  5. My charge, that, where the cart-road from the plain
  6. Branches, they make due burial for our slain.
One party of Guards lifts carefully the wounded THRACIAN and goes off bearing him: another departs with the message to Troy.
CHORUS.
  1. Back from the heights of happiness,
  2. Back, back, to labour and distress
  3. Some god that is not ours doth lead
  4. Troy and her sons; He sows the seed,
  5. Who knows the reaping?
  6. Ah! Ah!