Part 26

CHOR. I will awake the sad funereal dirge, And wailing pay to my departed lord Such customary tribute as attends The shades of mighty chiefs.

PEL. Ah me! at once With misery and old age bowed down to earth, I shed th’ incessant tear.

CHOR. Thus hath the god Ordained, the god’s vindictive arm hath wrought All these calamities.

PEL. O most beloved, This house, ah me! a desert hast thou left, And me a miserable old man made childless.

CHOR. Before thy children, O thou aged man, Thou shouldst have died.

PEL. Shall I not rend my hair, And beat with desperate hands this hoary head? O city! Phœbus hath of both my sons Deprived me.

CHOR. O thou miserable old man, What evils hast thou witnessed and endured! How wilt thou pass the remnant of thy life?

PEL. Childless, forlorn, no period to my woes Can I discover, but till death must drink The bitter potion.

CHOR. Sure the gods in vain Showered blessings on thy nuptials.

PEL. Fled and withered Is all our ancient pomp.

CHOR. Alone thou mov’st Around thy lonely house.

PEL. I have no city. Thee, O my sceptre, to the ground I cast, And from yon dreary caverns of the main, Daughter of Nereus, me wilt thou behold Utterly ruined, grovelling in the dust.

CHOR. Ha! who was it that moved? what form divine Do I perceive? look there! ye nymphs, attend, With rapid passage through the fleecy clouds Borne onward, some divinity arrives At Phthia’s pastures, famed for generous steeds.

THETIS, PELEUS, CHORUS.

THE. O Peleus, mindful of the ties which bound Our plighted love, I hither from the house Of Nereus come, and with these wholesome counsels Begin; despair not, though thy present woes Are grievous: for e’en I who should have borne A race of children such as ne’er might cause My tears to stream, have lost the son who crowned Our hopes, Achilles, swift of foot, the first Of Grecian heroes. But to thee, the motives Which brought me hither, will I now relate; O listen to my voice. Back to that altar Devoted to the Pythian god, convey This body of Achilles’ slaughtered son, And bury it; so shall his tomb declare The murderous violence Orestes’ band Committed: but yon captive dame, I mean Andromache, on Helenus bestowed In marriage, in Molossia’s land must dwell, And her young son, the only royal branch Which of the stem of Æacus remains; From him in long succession shall a race Of happy kings Molossia’s sceptre wield: Nor will our progeny, O aged man, Be utterly extinct, when blended thus With Ilion, still protected by the gods, Though by Minerva’s stratagems it fell. But, as for thee, that thou mayst know the blessing Of having wedded me, who am by birth A goddess and the daughter of a god, From all the ills which wait on human life Releasing, thee immortal will I make And incorruptible; with me a goddess In Nereus’ watery mansions thou a god Hereafter shalt reside, and from the waves Emerging with dry feet, behold our son Achilles, to his parents justly dear, Inhabiting that isle whose chalky coasts Are laved by the surrounding Euxine deep. But go to Delphi’s city by the gods Erected, thither bear this weltering corse, And when thou hast interred it, to this land Return, and in that cave which through the rock Of Sepia time hath worn, thy station keep Till from the waves I with my sister choir The fifty Nereids come, to bear thee hence. Thou must endure the woe’s imposed by fate, For thus hath Jove ordained. But cease to grieve For the deceased: for by the righteous gods The same impartial sentence is awarded To the whole human race, and death’s a debt Which all must pay.

PEL. Hail, venerable dame, Daughter of Nereus, my illustrious wife: For what thou dost is worthy of thyself, And of thy progeny. I cease to grieve At thy command, O goddess, and will go, Soon as my grandson’s corse I have interred, To Pelion’s cave, where first thy beauteous form I in these arms received. The man whose choice Is by discretion guided, should select A consort nobly born, and give his daughters To those of virtuous families, nor wish To wed a damsel sprung from worthless sires, Though to his house a plenteous dower she bring: So shall he ne’er incur the wrath of Heaven.

CHOR. A thousand shapes our varying fates assume, The gods perform what we could least expect, And oft the things for which we fondly hoped Come not to pass: but Heaven still finds a clue To guide our steps through life’s perplexing maze. And thus does this important business end.