PRAYER FOR DELIVERANCE FROM THE PESTILENCE (from "Oedipus the King")
by: Sophocles
- ORD of the
Pythian treasure [1],
- What meaneth the word thou hast spoken?
- The strange and wondrous word,
- Which Thebes has heard,
- Oh! it hath shaken our hearts to a faltering measure!
- A token, O Paian, a token!
- What is thy boon to us?
- Shall it come soon to us,
- Shall it be long e'er the circle bend
- Full round to the fatal end?
- Answer us, daughter of Hope,
- Voice born Immortal of golden Hope!
-
- First therefore thou be entreated,
- Divine unapproachable maiden [2],
- And Artemis with thee, our aid to be,
- In the mid mart of our city majestical seated,
- And Phoebus the archer death-laden!
- By your affinity
- Helpfullest trinity,
- Help us. And as in the time gone by
- Ye have bowed to our plaintive cry,
- Bowed to our misery sore:
- So come to us now as ye came before.
- Ah me! it is a world, a world of woe,
- Plague upon the height and plague below!
- And they mow us with murderous glaive,
- And never a shield to save!
- Never a fruit of the earth comes to the birth,
- And in vain, in vain
- Is the cry and the labor of mothers, and all for a fruitless
pain.
- Away, away,
- Ghost upon ghost they are wafted away:
- One with another they die,
- Swifter than flame do they fly
- From life, from light, from day.
-
- Ah me! it is a world, a world of dead,
- Feverous and foul, with corpses spread:
- And they lie as they lie, unbefriended.
- Where are the mothers, and where are the wives?
- They are fled, fled for their lives,
- To the alters to pray,
- There to lie, to sigh,
- And to pray, and to pray unattended,
- With choir and cry
- Lamentation and litany blended.
- And only, O Maiden, by thee may our marred estate be mended.
-
- The fiend of plague, whose swordless hand
- Burns like battle through the land,
- With wild tempestuous wailing all about him,--
- O cross his track and turn him back
- O meet him, thou, and rout him!
- Let him sink again
- Deep in the deepest main!
- Let him mingle in horrible motion
- With the wildest ocean!
- (For still what 'scapes the cruel night,
- Cruel day destroys it quite.)
- But oh! with thunder-stroke
- Let our enemy and thine be broke,--
- O Zeus! --
- Father! -- let him know thy wrath, thy wrath divine!
-
- O God of light, from lightsome bow
- Cast abroad thy fiery snow,
- Like morsels cast thine arrowy, fiery snow!
- And thou, O mountain maiden pure,
- His sister, stand our champion sure,
- Stand and strow
- Arrows, as fire, below!
- Thou too -- thou art Theban -- O Bacchus,
- Thou -- art thou not Theban? -- O Bacchus,
- In rosy bloom, elate and strong,
- Lead thy madding train along,
- Until thy fiery chase
- Hunt the demon from the place
- Afar, afar!
- O follow, follow him far, afar!
1
Apollo.
2
Athena.
This English translation, by Arthur
Woolgar Verrall, of 'Prayer for Deliverance from the Pestilence'
is reprinted from Greek Poets in English Verse. Ed. William
Hyde Appleton. Cambridge: The Riverside Press, 1893. |
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