So stintlessly wept Alkimedê, so in her arms did she strain

Her son; and she cried from the depths of her love and her yearning pain:

‘Oh, that on that same day when I, the affliction-oppressed,

Hearkened the voice of Pelias the king, and his evil behest,

I had yielded up the ghost, and forgotten to mourn and to weep, {280}

That thyself, that thine own dear hands, in the grave might have laid me to sleep,

O my beloved!—for this was the one wish unfulfilled:

But with other thy nursing-dues long had mine heart in contentment been stilled.

And I, of Achaia’s daughters the envied in days that are gone,

Like a bondwoman now in tenantless halls shall be left alone,