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
Unblessèd images of dreadful shapes evoked,
Which so encompass 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-inflamèd men,
Kindled by impulse rash to boldest enterprise.
Theseus by passion stirred full early seized on thee,
A man of glorious form, and strong as Heracles.