Stasimon 4
[Episode 1]
rushing wildly on to the stage. Woe, woe is me! I will tear my hair and scratch cruel furrows in my cheeks.
825
Nurse
My child, what wilt thou do? Wilt thou disfigure thyself?
Begone, thou fine-spun veil! float from my head away!
830
Nurse
Daughter, cover up thy bosom, fasten thy robe.
[Episode 2]
Why should I cover it?
Hermione
My crimes against my lord are manifest and clear, they cannot be hidden.
835
Nurse
Art so grieved at having devised thy rival’s death?
Hermione
Indeed I am; I deeply mourn my fatal deeds of daring; alas! I am now accursed in all men’s eyes!
Nurse
Thy husband will pardon thee this error.
840
[Episode]
Oh! why didst thou hunt me to snatch away my sword? Give, oh! give it back, dear nurse, that I may thrust it through my heart. Why dost thou prevent me hanging myself?
Nurse
What! was I to let thy madness lead thee on to death?
845
Hermione
Ah me, my destiny! Where can I find some friendly fire? To what rocky height can I climb above the sea or ’mid some wooded mountain glen,
there to die and trouble but the dead?
850
Nurse
Why vex thyself thus? on all of us sooner or later heaven’s visitation comes.
Hermione
Thou hast left me, O my father,
left me like a stranded bark, all alone, without an oar. My lord will surely slay me; no home is mine henceforth beneath my husband’s roof. What god is there to whose statue I can as a suppliant haste?
855
or shall I throw myself in slavish wise at slavish knees? Would I could speedReading ἀερθείην with Seidler. away from Phthia’s land on bird’s dark pinion, or like that pine-built ship,Argo, in quest of the Golden Fleece.
860
the first that ever sailed betwixt the rocks Cyanean!
865
Nurse
My child, I can as little praise thy previous sinful excesses, committed against the Trojan captive, as thy present exaggerated terror. Thy husband will never listen to
