THE BOOK WAS DRENCHED - OUDL Home

CHORUS (chanting)
Woe! woe is thee for thy piteous lot! thou hast done thyself a hurt
deep enough to overthrow this family. Ah! ah! the daring of it!
done to death by violence and unnatural means, the desperate effort
of thy own poor hand! Who cast the shadow o'er thy life, poor lady?
THESEUS (chanting)
Ah me, my cruel lot! sorrow hath done her worst on me. O fortune,
how heavily hast thou set thy foot on me and on my house, by
fiendish hands inflicting an unexpected stain? Nay, 'tis complete
effacement of my life, making it not to be lived; for I see, alas! so
wide an ocean of grief that I can never swim to shore again, nor
breast the tide of this calamity. How shall I speak of thee, my poor
wife, what tale of direst suffering tell? Thou art vanished like a bird
from the covert of my hand, taking one headlong leap from me to
Hades' halls. Alas, and woe! this is a bitter, bitter sight! This must
be a judgment sent by God for the sins of an ancestor, which from
some far source I am bringing on myself.
LEADER OF THE CHORUS
My prince, 'tis not to thee alone such sorrows come; thou hast lost
a noble wife, but so have many others.
THESEUS (chanting)
Fain would I go hide me 'neath earth's blackest depth, to dwell
in darkness with the dead in misery, now that I am reft of thy dear
presence! for thou hast slain me than thyself e'en more. Who can
tell me what caused the fatal stroke that reached thy heart, dear
wife? Will no one tell me what befell? doth my palace all in vain
give shelter to a herd of menials? Woe, woe for thee, my wife! sorrows
past speech, past bearing, I behold within my house; myself a
ruined man, my home a solitude, my children orphans!
CHORUS (chanting)
Gone and left us hast thou, fondest wife and noblest of all women
'neath the sun's bright eye or night's star-lit radiance. Poor house,
what sorrows are thy portion now! My eyes are wet with streams of
tears to see thy fate; but the ill that is to follow has long with terror
filled me.
THESEUS
Ha! what means this letter? clasped in her dear hand it hath some
strange tale to tell. Hath she, poor lady, as a last request, written her
bidding as to my marriage and her children? Take heart, poor ghost; no
wife henceforth shall wed thy Theseus or invade his house. Ah! how yon