Stasimon 5
[Episode]
Vengeance, who crawled and stabbed him where he lay.
MUSE.
With a dirge of the Thracian mountains,P. 50,1. 895 ff. and 1. 906 ff., A dirge of the Thracian mountains.]—Such dirges must have struck the Greeks as the fragments of Ossian struck the Lowlanders among us. I have found that the dirge here goes naturally into a sort of Ossianic rhythm.
895
I mourn for thee, O my son.
For a mother’s weeping, for a galley’s launching, for
A sad going, and watched by spirits of evil.
His mother chid him to stay, but he rose and went.
900
His father besought him to stay, but he went in anger.
Ah, woe is me for thee, thou dear face,
LEADER.
Goddess, if tears for such as thee may run
In our low eyes, I weep for thy dead son.
905
MUSE.
I say to thee: Curse Odysseus,
For they made me childless, and forlorn for ever, of
Yea, curse Helen, who left the houses of Hellas.
910
She knew her lover, she feared not the ships and sea.
She called thee, called thee, to die for the sake of Paris,
Belovèd, and a thousand cities
