The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Volume I Part 102

To Orcus hence, away! Seek thou thy kindred there!

THIRD CHORISTER

Who yonder dwell, in sooth, for thee are far too young.

PHORKYAS

Tiresias, the h.o.a.ry, go, make love to him!

FOURTH CHORISTER

Orion's nurse of old, was thy great-grand-daughter.

PHORKYAS

Harpies, so I suspect, did rear thee up in filth.

FIFTH CHORISTER

Thy cherished meagreness, whereon dost nourish that?

PHORKYAS

'Tis not with blood, for which so keenly thou dost thirst.

SIXTH CHORISTER

For corpses dost thou hunger, loathsome corpse thyself!

PHORKYAS

Within thy shameless jaw the teeth of vampires gleam.

SEVENTH CHORISTER

Thine I should stop were I to tell thee who thou art.

PHORKYAS

First do thou name thyself; the riddle then is solved.

HELENA

Not wrathful, but in grief, step I between you now, Forbidding such alternate quarrel's angry noise; For to the ruler naught more hurtful can befall, Than, 'mong his trusty servants, sworn and secret strife; The echo of his mandate then to him no more In swift accomplished deed responsively returns; No, stormful and self-will'd, it rages him around, The self-bewilder'd one, and chiding still in vain.

Nor this alone; ye have in rude unmanner'd wrath Unblessed images of dreadful shapes evoked, Which so encompa.s.s me, that whirl'd I feel myself To Orcus down, despite these my ancestral fields.

Is it remembrance? Was it frenzy seized on me?

Was I all that? and am I? shall I henceforth be The dread and phantom-shape of those town-wasting ones?

The maidens quail: but thou, the eldest, thou dost stand, Calm and unmoved; speak, then, to me some word of sense!

PHORKYAS

Who of long years recalls the fortune manifold, To him heaven's highest favor seems at last a dream.

But thou, so highly favored, past all bound or goal, Saw'st, in thy life-course, none but love-inflamed men, Kindled by impulse rash to boldest enterprise.

Theseus by pa.s.sion stirred full early seized on thee, A man of glorious form, and strong as Heracles.

HELENA

Forceful he bore me off, a ten-year slender roe, And in Aphidnus' keep shut me, in Attica.

PHORKYAS

But thence full soon set free, by Castor, Pollux too, In marriage wast thou sought by chosen hero-band.

HELENA

Yet hath Patroclus, he, Pelides' other self, My secret favor won, as willingly I own.

PHORKYAS

But thee thy father hath to Menelaus wed, Bold rover of the sea, and house-sustainer too.

HELENA

His daughter gave he, gave to him the kingdom's sway; And from our wedded union sprang Hermione.

PHORKYAS

But while he strove afar, for Crete, his heritage, To thee, all lonely, came an all too beauteous guest.

HELENA

Wherefore the time recall of that half-widowhood, And what destruction dire to me therefrom hath grown!

PHORKYAS

That voyage unto me, a free-born dame of Crete, Hath also capture brought, and weary servitude.

HELENA

As stewardess forthwith, he did appoint thee here, With much intrusted,--fort and treasure boldly won.

PHORKYAS

All which thou didst forsake, by Ilion's tower-girt town Allured, and by the joys, the exhaustless joys of love.

HELENA

Remind me not of joys: No, an infinitude Of all too bitter woe o'erwhelm'd my heart and brain.