Page:Tragedies of Seneca (1907) Miller.djvu/34

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And even now the fates are aimed at me.
For what am I to think, when this fell pest,
Although it lays its blighting hand on all, 30
Spares me alone? For what new horror now
Am I reserved? Amidst my city's woes,
'Mid funeral pyres that ever must be wet
With tears of grief afresh, 'mid heaps of slain,
I stand unscathed. And couldst thou hope that thou,
A culprit at the bar of God, shouldst gain 35
For guilt a wholesome kingdom in return?
Nay, rather, I myself infect the air.
For now no breeze with its soft breath relieves
Our spirits suffocating with the heat;
No gentle zephyrs breathe upon the land;
But Titan with the dog-star's scorching fires
Doth parch us, pressing hard upon the back 40
Of Nemea's lion. From their wonted streams
The waters all have fled, and from the herbs
Their accustomed green. Now Dirce's fount is dry;
While to a trickling rill Ismenus' flood
Hath shrunk, and barely laves the naked sands.
Athwart the sky doth Phoebus' sister glide
With paling light, and, 'mid the lowering clouds, 45
The darkling heavens fade. No starlight gleams
Amid the gloomy silence of the night,
But heavy mists brood low upon the earth;
And those bright mansions of the heavenly gods
Are sicklied over with the hues of hell.
The full-grown harvest doth withhold its fruit;
And, though the yellow fields stand thick with corn, 50
Upon the stalk the shriveled grain is dead.
No class is free from this destructive plague,
But every age and sex falls equally;
Where youth with age, and sire with son are joined,
And wife and husband are together burned. 55
Now funerals claim no more their wonted grief;
The magnitude of woe hath dried our eyes;
And tears, the last resource of woeful hearts,
Have perished utterly. The stricken sire