THE BOOK WAS DRENCHED - OUDL Home

1000 Euripides [ 1090-1117]
As the tears run dry:
'Mother, alone on the shore
They drive me, far from thee:
Lo, the dip of the oar,
The black hull on the sea!
Is it the Isle Immortal,
Salamis, waits for me?
Is it the Rock that broods
Over the sundered floods
Of Corinth, the ancient portal
Of Pelops* sovranty?'
A Woman
Out in the waste of foam,
Where rideth dark Menelaus,
Come to us there, O white
And jagged, with wild sea-light
And crashing of oar-blades, come,
O thunder of God, and slay us:
While our tears are wet for home,
While out in the storm go we,
Slaves of our enemy!
Others
And, God, may Helen be there,
With mirror of gold,
Decking her face so fair,
Girl-like; and hear, and stare,
And turn death-cold:
Never, ah, never more
The hearth of her home to see,
Nor sand of the Spartan shore,
Nor tombs where her fathers be,
Nor Athena's bronzen Dwelling,
Nor the towers of Pitane;
For her face was a dark desire
Upon Greece, and shame like fire,
And her dead are welling, welling,
From red Simois to the sea!
antistrophe 2
(TALTHYBIUS, followed by one or two Soldiers
and bearing the child ASTYANAX dead, is
seen approaching.)