Page:Tragedies of Seneca (1907) Miller.djvu/220

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Messenger: My tongue can find do words to voice its woe. 995
Theseus: But speak, what evil fortune still besets
My shattered house?
Messenger: ⁠Hippolytus is dead!
Theseus: The father knew long since his son had died;
But now the adulterer has met his end.
Tell me, I pray, the manner of his death.
Messenger: When, fleeing forth, he left the city's walls, 1000
With maddened speed he hurried on his way,
And quickly yoked his chargers to his car,
And curbed them to his will with close-drawn reins.
And then, with much wild speech, and cursing loud
His native land, oft calling on his sire, 1005
He fiercely shook the reins above his steeds;
When suddenly, far out the vast sea roared,
And heaved itself to heaven. No wind was there
To stir the sea, no quarter of the sky
Broke in upon its peace; the rising waves
Were by their own peculiar tempest raised 1010
No blast so great had ever stirred the straits
Of Sicily, nor had the deep e'er swelled
With such wild rage before the north wind's breath,
When high cliffs trembled with the shock of waves,
And hoary foam smote high Leucate's top.
The sea then rose into a mighty heap, 1015
And, big with monstrous birth, was landward borne.
For no ship's wrecking was this swelling pest
Intended; landward was its aim. The flood
Rolled shoreward heavily, something unknown
Within its laden bosom carrying.
What land, new born, will lift its head aloft? 1020
Is some new island of the Cyclades
Arising? Now the rocky heights are hid,
Held sacred to the Epidaurian god,
And those high crags well known for Sciron's crime;
No longer can be seen that land whose shores
Are washed by double seas. While in amaze 1025
We look in fear and wonder, suddenly
The whole sea bellows, and on every side