IV
THESEUS:
Here is Theramenes. Where is my boy,
my first-born? He was yours to guard and keep.
Where is he? Answer me. What's this? You weep?
THERAMENES:
Oh tardy, futile grief, his blood is shed.
My lord, your son, Hippolytus is dead.
THESEUS:
Oh, Gods, have mercy!
THERAMENES:
I saw him die. The most
lovely and innocent of men is lost.
THESEUS:
He's dead! The gods have hurried him away
and killed him, just as I began to pray.
What sudden thunderbolt has struck him down?
THERAMENES:
We'd started out, and hardly left the town.
He held the reins; a few feet to his rear,
a single, silent guard held up a spear.
He followed the Mycenae highroad, deep
in thought, reins dangling, as if half asleep;
his famous horses, only he could hold,
trudged on with lowered heads, and sometimes rolled
their dull eyes slowly-they seemed to have caught
their master's melancholy, and aped his thought.
Then all at once winds struck us like a fist,
we heard a sudden roaring through the mist;
from underground a voice in agony
answered the prolonged groaning of the sea.
We shook, the horses' manes rose on their heads,
and now against a sky of blacks and reds,
we saw the flat waves hump into a mountain
of green-white water rising like a fountain,
as it reached land and crashed with a last roar
to shatter like a galley on the shore.
