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PHI.
Now, seated by the shore
Of heaving ocean hoar,
He mocks me, waving high
The sole support of my precarious being,
The bow which none e’er held but I.
O treasure of my heart, torn from this hand,
That loved thy touch,–if thou canst understand,
How sad must be thy look in seeing
Thy master destined now no more,
Like HERACLES of yore,
To wield thee with an archer’s might!
But in the grasp of an all-scheming wight,
O bitter change! thou art plied;
And swaying ever by his side,
Shalt view his life of dark malignity,
Teeming with guileful shames, like those he wrought on me.

CH.
3. Nobly to speak for the right
Is manly and strong;
But not with an envious blight
To envenom the tongue;
He to serve all his friends of the fleet,
One obeying a many-voiced word,
Through the minist’ring craft of our lord
Hath but done what was meet.

PHI.
Come, legions of the wild,
Of aspect fierce or mild,
Fowl from the fields of air,
And beasts that roam with bright untroubled gaze,
No longer bounding from my lair
Fly mine approach! Now freely without fear
Ye may surround my covert and come near,
Treading the savage rock-strewn ways.
The might I had is no more mine,
Stolen with those arms divine.
This fort hath no man to defend.
Come satisfy your vengeful jaws, and rend
These quivering tainted limbs!
Already hovering death bedims
My fainting sense. Who thus can live on air,
Tasting no gift of earth that breathing mortals share?

CH.
4. Ah! do not shrink from thy friend,
If love thou reverest,
But know ’tis for thee to forfend
The fate which thou fearest.
The lot thou hast here to deplore,
Is sad evermore to maintain,
And hardship in sickness is sore,
But sorest in pain.

PHI.
Kindest of all that e’er before
Have trod this shore,
Again thou mind’st me of mine ancient woe!
Why wilt thou ruin me? What wouldst thou do?

CH.
5. How mean’st thou?

PHI.
If to Troy, of me abhorred
Thou e’er hast hoped to lead me with thy lord.

CH.
6. So I judge best.

PHI.
Begone at once, begone!

CH.
7. Sweet is that word, and swiftly shall be done!
Let us be gone, each to his place on board.

[The Chorus make as if they were going]

PHI.
Nay, by dear Zeus, to whom all suppliants moan
Leave me not yet!

CH.
8. Keep measure in thy word.

PHI.
Stay, by Heaven, stay!

CH.
9. What wilt thou say?

PHI.
O misery! O cruel power
That rul’st this hour!
I am destroyed. Ah me!
O poor torn limb, what shall I do with thee
Through all my days to be?
Ah, strangers, come, return, return!

CH.
10. What new command are we to learn
Crossing thy former mind?

PHI.
Ah! yet be kind.
Reprove not him, whose tongue, with grief distraught,
Obeys not, in dark storms, the helm of thought!

CH.
11. Come, poor friend, the way we call.