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. We Sisters came with lutes and psalteries,
  2. Provoked to meet in bitter strife of song
  3. That mountain wizard, and made dark the eyes
  4. Of Thamyris, who wrought sweet music wrong.
  5. I bore thee, Child; and then, in shame before
  6. My sisterhood, my dear virginity,
  7. I stood again upon thy Father’s shore
  8. And cast thee to the deeps of him; and he
  9. Received and to no mortal nursing gave
  10. His child, but to the Maidens of the Wave.
  11. And well they nursed thee, and a king thou wast
  12. And first of Thrace in war; yea, far and near
  13. Through thine own hills thy bloody chariot passed,
  14. Thy battered helm flashed, and I had no fear;
  15. Only to Troy I charged thee not to go:
  16. I knew the fated end: but Hector’s cry,
  17. Borne overseas by embassies of woe,
  18. Called thee to battle for thy friends and die.
  19. And thou, Athena—nothing was the deed
  20. Odysseus wrought this night nor Diomede—