Stasimon 4
CHOROS.
Like some brown nightingale
Insatiable of noise, who — well-away! —
Keeps moaning Itus, Itus, and his life
With evils, flourishing on each side, rife.
1145
The fate o’ the nightingale, the clear resounder!
For a body wing-borne have the gods cast round her,
And sweet existence, from misfortunes free:
But for myself remains a sundering
With spear, the two-edged thing!
CHOROS.
Whence hast thou this on-rushing god-involving pain
1150
For, things that terrify,
With changing unintelligible cry
Thou strikest up in tune, yet all the while
After that Orthian style!
Whence hast thou limits to the oracular road,
KASSANDRA.
Ah me, the nuptials, the nuptials of Paris, the deadly to friends!
Ah me, of Skamandros the draught
Paternal! There once, to these ends,
On thy banks was I brought,
The unhappy! And now, by Kokutos and Acheron’s shore
1160
I shall soon be, it seems, these my oracles singing once more!
CHOROS.
Why this word, plain too much,
Hast thou uttered? A babe might learn of such!
I am struck with a bloody bite — here under —
At the fate woe-wreaking
1165
Of thee shrill shrieking:
