DEIANIRA.
Where didst thou into his loved presence come?
HYLLUS.
Hear and I'll tell thee all. As having stormed
The famous town of Eurytus, he marched,
With spoils and trophies of his victory.
At the Cenaean headland he arrived,
Euboea's point, and there set out for Zeus
Altars ancestral and a precinct green.
Here met I him whom I had longed to see.
As he stood ready for the sacrifice
Comes his own herald Lichas from his home,
And brings thy gift, that robe imbrued with death,
Which he, fulfilling thy behest, put on,
And therein clad, was offering sacrifice,
Twelve steers unblemished, while of beasts in all
He to the altars led a hecatomb.
At first, unhappy one, with jocund heart
He prayed, rejoicing in his brave attire;
But when from the good oak logs and the flesh
Of victims slain, the bloody flame leaped forth.
A sweat broke out on him, and to his sides
The garment clave, enfolding every joint
As by a workman fitted, while his bones
Were racked with shooting pains, and as it seemed
A deadly serpent's venom fed on him.
Then did he loud on hapless Lichas call,
Him who was nowise party to thy crime,
And bade him say what wretch had set him on
To bring the robe. The herald knowing naught,
Said as thou badst him, that it was thy gift.
Whereupon Heracles, his heartstrings grasped
By agonising pains that pierced him through,
Seized Lichas by the ankle, hurled him down
From the cliff's edge upon a wave-washed rock
That jutted from the sea, shattered his skull,
So that his brains streamed mingled with his blood.
At the two sights, of frenzy and of death,
A universal cry of horror rose,
Nor was there one who dared approach my sire;
He in convulsions now sprang up, now fell
With yells which made the neighbouring cliffs, the crags
Of Locris and Euboea's headland ring.
Oft did he cast himself upon the ground,
Long did he utter lamentations loud,
Cursing his marriage, swearing that his tie
To Oeneus had brought ruin on his life.
When he gave o'er, with eye upturned with pain,
Glancing from out the smoke, me, in the crowd,
Weeping he saw, and called me to his side.
"My son," he murmured, "shrink not from thy sire,
Not though it be thy doom to die with him.
Bear me away and lay me, if thou may'st,
Where none may look upon my agony.
If that would pain thee from this hated coast
Ship me at least, and let me not die here."
Obedient to his wish, with much ado
We laid him in the hold and hither brought
Convulsed and bellowing. Ye will see him soon,
Lingering upon life's verge or newly dead.
Mother, of these dark crimes thou stand'st convict,
For which may heaven's high justice deal with thee
And the Erinnyes, if that prayer is meet
For a son's lips; and thou hast made it meet
By murdering, of all dwellers upon earth,
The noblest man, whose peer thou ne'er shalt see.
CHORUS.
(To DEIANIRA who leaves the scene.)
Canst thou depart in silence and not see
That silence pleads on the accuser's side?
HYLLUS.
Let her go where she will. Fair be the wind
That bears out of my sight that hated barque.
A mother's name is but a hollow sound
When all her doings are unmotherly.
May joy go with her, and such happiness
Be hers, as she has made my sire to feel.