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TEU
. I too have seen a man whose windy pride
Poured forth loud insults o’er a neighbour’s fall,
Till one whose cause and temper showed like mine
Spake to him in my hearing this plain word:
‘Man, do the dead no wrong; but, if thou dost,
Be sure thou shalt have sorrow.’ Thus he warned
The infatuate one: ay, one whom I behold,
For all may read my riddle–thou art he.

MEN.
I will be gone. ‘Twere shame to me, if known,
To chide when I have power to crush by force.

TEU.
Off with you, then! ‘Twere triple shame in me
To list the vain talk of a blustering fool.

[Exit MENELAUS]

LEADER OF CHORUS.
High the quarrel rears his head!
Haste thee, Teucer, trebly haste,
Grave-room for the valiant dead
Furnish with what speed thou mayst,
Hollowed deep within the ground,
Where beneath his mouldering mound
Aias aye shall be renowned.

[Re-enter TECMESSA with EURYSAKES.]

TEU.
Lo! where the hero’s housemate and his child,
Hitting the moment’s need, appear at hand,
To tend the burial of the ill fated dead.
Come, child, take thou thy station close beside:
Kneel and embrace the author of thy life,
In solemn suppliant fashion holding forth
This lock of thine own hair, and hers, and mine
With threefold consecration, that if one
Of the army force thee from thy father’s corse,
My curse may banish him from holy ground,
Far from his home, unburied, and cut off
From all his race, even as I cut this curl.
There, hold him, child, and guard him; let no hand
Stir thee, but lean to the calm breast and cling.
(To CHORUS) And ye, be not like women in this scene,
Nor let your manhoods falter; stand true men
To this defence, till I return prepared,
Though all cry No, to give him burial.

[Exit]

CHORUS.
When shall the tale of wandering years be done?
When shall arise our exile’s latest sun?
Oh, where shall end the incessant woe
Of troublous spear-encounter with the foe,
Through this vast Trojan plain,
Of Grecian arms the lamentable stain?

Would he had gone to inhabit the wide sky,
Or that dark home of death where millions lie,
Who taught our Grecian world the way
To use vile swords and knit the dense array!
His toil gave birth to toil
In endless line. He made mankind his spoil.

His tyrant will hath forced me to forgo
The garland, and the goblet’s bounteous flow:
Yea, and the flute’s dear noise,
And night’s more tranquil joys;
Ay me! nor only these,
The fruits of golden ease,
But Love, but Love–O crowning sorrow!–
Hath ceased for me. I may not borrow
Sweet thoughts from him to smooth my dreary bed,
Where dank night-dews fall ever on my head,
Lest once I might forget the sadness of the morrow.

Even here in Troy, Aias was erst my rock,
From darkling fears and ‘mid the battle-shock
To screen me with huge might:
Now he is lost in night
And horror. Where again
Shall gladness heal my pain?
O were I where the waters hoary,
Round Sunium’s pine-clad promontory,
Plash underneath the flowery upland height.
Then holiest Athens soon would come in sight,
And to Athena’s self I might declare my story.

[Enter TEUCER.]

TEU.
My steps were hastened, brethren, when I saw
Great Agamemnon hitherward afoot.
He means to talk perversely, I can tell.