THE BOOK WAS DRENCHED - OUDL Home

But when thou wouldst avenge thee on thy foes,
There is no law of weight to hinder thee.
(They both go out.)
CHORUS (singing)
Daughter of Ceres, Trivia hear,
Propitious regent of each public way
Amid the brightness of the day,
Nor less when night's dark hour engenders fear;
The fulness of this goblet guide
To check with death this stripling's pride,
For whom my queen this fatal draught prepares,
Tinged with the Gorgon's venom'd gore:
That seat, which mid Erechtheus' royal heirs
His pride claims, it shall claim no more:
Never may one of alien blood disgrace
The imperial honours of that high-born race!
strophe 1
antistrophe 1
Should not this work of fate succeed,
Nor the just vengeance of my queen prevail;
Should this apt time of daring fail,
And hope, that flatters now, desert the deed;
Slaughter shall other means afford,
The strangling cord, the piercing sword;
For rage from disappointed rage shall flow,
And try each various form of death;
For never shall my queen this torment know;
Ne'er while she draws this vital breath,
Brook in her house that foreign lords should shine,
Clothed with the splendours of her ancient line.
Thou whom the various hymn delights,
Then thy bright choir of beauteous dames among,
Dancing the stream's soft brink along,
Thou seest the guardian of thy mystic rites,
Thy torch its midnight vigils keep,
Thine eye meantime disdaining sleep;
While with thee dances Jove's star-spangled plain,
And the moon dances up the sky:
Ye nymphs, that lead to grots your frolic train,
Beneath the gulfy founts that lie;
strophe 2