lit trad III
Cards (152)
- I ask the gods some respite from the weariness / of this watchtime measured by years I lie awake / elbowed upon the Atreidae's roof dogwise / to mark the grand processionals of all the stars of night
- But this is evil, see! / Now once again the pain of grim, true prophecy /shivers my whirling brain in a storm of things foreseen.
- That he might not escape nor beat aside his death, / as fishermen cast their huge circling nets, I spread / deadly abundance of rich robes, and caught him fast. / I struck him twice.
- Do not try in woman's ways to make / me delicate, nor, as if I were some Asiatic /bow down to earth and with wide mouth cry out to me, / nor cross my path with jealousy by strewing the ground with robes.
- Hail to the Argive land and to its sunlight, hail / to its high sovereign, Zeus, and to the Pythian kings. / May you no longer shower your arrows on our heads.
- When you marshalled this armament / for Helen's sake, I will not hide it, / in ugly style you were written in my heart / for steering aslant the mind's course to bring home by blood / sacrifice and dead men that wild spirit.
- Orestes' father gave him to my charge. / And now, unhappy, I am told that he is dead / and go to take the story to that man who has / defiled our house.
- What shall I say, as I pour out these outpourings / of sorrow? How say the good word, how make my prayer / to my father? Shall I say I bring it to the man / beloved, from a loving wife, and mean by mother?
- What then becomes thereafter of the oracles / declared by Loxias at Pytho? / What of sworn oaths? / Count all men hateful to you rather than the gods.
- Bring me quick, somebody, an ax to kill a man / and we shall see if we can beat him before we / go down--so far gone are we in this wretched fight.
- Here is a song sung to the gods beneath us. /Hear then, you blessed ones under the ground, / and answer these prayers with strength on our side, / free gift for your children's conquest.
- Indeed, the terror of your dreams saw things to come / clearly. You killed, and it was wrong. Now suffer wrong.
- Women who serve this house, they come like gorgons, they / wear robes of black, and they are wreathed in a tangle / of snakes
- I, disinherited, suffering, heavy with anger / shall let loose in the land / the vindictive poison / dripping deadly out of my heart upon the ground.
- Make more / the issue of those who worship more your ways, for as / the gardener works in love, / so love I best of all / the unblighted generation of these upright men.
- The stain of blood dulls now and fades upon my hand. / My blot of matricide is being washed away.
- The mother is no parent of that which is called / her child, but only nurse of the new-planted seed / that grows. The parent is he who mounts. A stranger she / preserves a stranger's seed. if no god interfere.
- Things terrible to tell and for the eyes to see / terrible drove me out again from Loxias' house/ so that I have no strength and cannot stand on springing / feet, but run with hands; help and my legs have no speed.
- Let / not the dry dust that drinks / the black blood of citizens / through passion for revenge / and bloodshed for bloodshed / be given our state to prey upon.
- So this rock is named / from then the Hill of Ares. Here the reverence / of citizens, their fear and kindred do-no-wrong / shall hold by day and in the blessing of night alike / all while the people do not muddy their own laws / with foul infusions.
- The deity, the son of Zeus, / in feast, in festival, delights. / He loves the goddess Peace, / generous of good, / preserver of the young. / To rich and poor he gives / the simple gift of wine, / the gladness of the grape.
- Whoever this god may be, / sire, welcome him to Thebes... / It was he, / or so they say, who gave to mortal men / the gift of lovely wine by which our suffering is stopped. And if there is no god of wine, / there is no love, no Aphrodite either, / nor other pleasure left to men.
- But Cadmus and I, whom you ridicule, will crown / our heads with ivy and join the dances of the god--an ancient foolish pair perhaps, but dance / we must.
- In their midst stand bowls brimming with wine. / And then, one by one, the women wander off / to hidden nooks where they serve the lusts of men. / Priestesses of Bacchus they claim they are, / but it's really Aphrodite they adore.
- Where shall we go, where / shall we tread the dance, tossing our white heads / in the dances of god? / Expound to me, Teiresias. / For in such matters you are wise.
- But why should Pentheus suffer for my crime?
- Like it or not, this city must learn its lesson: / it lacks initiation in my mysteries; / that I shall vindicate my mother Semele / and stand revealed to mortal eyes as the god / she bore to Zeus.
- She was here even now; she haunts me in every place. I was the other day talking on the sea bank with certain Venetians, and thither comes the bauble, and falls me thus about my neck.
- I kissed thee ere I killed thee. No way but this, / Killing myself, to die upon a kiss.
- A guiltless death I die... Commend me to my kind lord. O, farewell.
- I will be hanged if some eternal villain, / Some busy and insinuating rogue, /Some cogging, cozening slave, to get some office, / Have not devised this slander. I will be hanged else.
- Demand me nothing. What you know, you know. / From this time forth I never will speak word.
- Look to her, Moor, if thou has eyes to see: / She has deceived her father, and may thee.
- I am a tainted wether of the flock, / Meetest for death. The weakest kind of fruit / Drops earliest to the ground, and so let me. / You cannot better be employed, Bassanio, / Than to live still, and write mine epitaph.
- You call me misbeliever, cutthroat dog, / And spet upon my Jewish gabardine, / And all for use of that which is mine own.
- Certainly the Jew is the very devil incarnation; and in my conscience, my conscience is but a kind of hard conscience to offer to counsel me to stay with the Jew.
- In my schooldays, when I had lost one shaft/ I shot his fellow of the selfsame flight / The selfsame way, with more advised watch, / To find the other forth; and by adventuring both / I oft found both.
- My Lord Bassanio, let him have the ring. / Let his deservings, and my love withal, / Be values 'gainst your wife's commandment.
- Well, while I live I'll fear no other thing / So sore, as keeping safe Nerissa's ring.
- In such a night /Did pretty Jessica, like a little shrow, / Slander her love, and he forgave it her.