Heracles: The man who would prefer great wealth or strength
More than love, more than
friends, is diseased of soul.
Friday, May 18, 2012
Post 5.17.2012.19
Theseus: My advice is this: be patient, suffer
What you must, and do not yield to grief.
Fate exempts no man; all men are flawed,
And so the gods, unless the poets lie.
Do not the gods commit adultery?
Have they not cast their fathers into chains,
In pursuit of power?
Yet all the same,
Despite their crimes, they live upon Olympus.
How dare you then, mortal that you are,
To protest your fate, when the gods do not?
Post 5.17.2012.18
Theseus: I loathe a friend whose gratitude grows old,
A friend who takes his friend’s prosperity
But will not voyage with him in his grief.
Rise up; uncover that afflicted head
And look on us.
This is courage in a man:
To bear unflinchingly what heaven sends.
Post 5.17.2012.17
Amphitryon: O my son, I implore you,
By your beard, your knees, your hand,
By an old man’s tears:
Tame that lion of your rage
That roars you onto death
Yoking grief to grief.
Post 5.17.2012.16
Heracles: I am bewildered. Where could I be helpless?
Help! Is there
some friend of mine, near or far,
Who could help me in my bewilderment?
For all I took for granted now seems strange…
Post 5.17.2012.15
Chorus: The gods of heaven do prevail:
They raise the good and scourge the bad.
Excess of happiness – it drives
Men’s minds awry, in its train
Comes on corrupted power.
No man foresees the final stretch of time.
Evil lures him, justice races by,
Until he wrecks at last the somber car
That holds his happiness.
Thursday, May 17, 2012
Post 5.17.2012.14
Chorus: If the gods were wise and understood
What human wisdom understands,
Second youth would be their gift,
To seal the goodness of a man.
And so, conspicuous of life,
The good would run their race to death
And double back to light again.
But evil men should live their lap,
One single life, and run no more.
By such a sign as all men would know
The wicked from the good,
As when the clouds are broken
And the sailor sees the stars.
But now the gods have put between the noble and the base
No clear distinction down.
And time and age go wheeling on,
Exalting only wealth.
Post 5.17.2012.13
Heracles: Here all mankind is equal:
Rich and poor alike, they love their children.
With wealth distinctions come: some possess it,
Some do not. All
mankind loves its children.
Post 5.17.2012.12
Amphitryon: For death is on us like necessity.
Our
lives, old friends, are but a little while,
So let them run as sweetly as you can,
And give no thought to grief from day to day.
For time is not concerned to keep our hopes,
But hurries on its business, and is gone.
You see in me a man who once had fame,
Who did great deeds; but fortune in one day
Has snatched it from me as though a feather.
Great wealth, great reputation! I know no man
With whom they stay.
Friends of my youth, farewell.
You look your last on him who loved you well.
Post 5.17.2012.11
Chorus: And many races more he ran,
And won in all the victor’s crown,
Whose harbor now is Hades’ tears,
The final labor of them all;
There his life is disembarked
In grief. He
comes no more.
His friends have left his house,
And Charon’s ferry waits
To take his children’s lives
The godless, lawless trip of no return.
To your hand, your house still turns,
And you are gone!
Could I have my youth once more,
Could I shake my spear once more
Beside the comrades of my youth,
My courage now would champion
Your sons. But
youth comes back no more
That blessed me once.
Post 5.17.2012.9
Amphitryon: For nothing, then, O Zeus, you shared my wife!
In vain we called you partner in my son!
Your love is even less than you pretended;
And I, mere man, am nobler than you, great god.
Post 5.17.2012.8
Amphitryon: Not cowardice, not love of life, keep me
From death, but my hope to save these children.
I am in love, it seems, with what cannot be.
Post 5.17.2012.7
Megara: How does the saying go? Hardly one day
Do men look kindly on their banished friend.
Dare death with us, which awaits you anyway.
By your great soul, I challenge you, old friend.
The man who sticks it out against his fate
Shows spirit, but the spirit of a fool.
No man alive can budge necessity.
Post 5.17.2012.6
Lycus: Go on, rant, pile up your tower of words!
My actions, not my words, shall answer your abuse.
Post 5.17.2012.5
Chorus: There is a source of speech in all brave men
Which does not fail, although the tongue be slow.
Post 5.17.2012.4
Amphitryon: Yet I grant you wise
In one respect: being base yourself,
You fear the children of a noble man.
Post 5.17.2012.3
Amphitryon: But the man whose hands know how to aim the bow,
Holds the best weapon: a thousand arrows shot,
He still has more to guard himself from death.
He stands far off, shooting at foes who see
Only the wound the unseen arrow plows,
While he himself, his body unexposed,
Lies screened and safe.
This is best in war:
To preserve yourself and to hurt your foe
Unless he stands secure, beyond your range.
Post 5.17.2012.2
Chorus: Leaning on our staffs we come
To the vaulted halls and the old man’s bed,
Our song the dirge of the dying swan,
Ourselves mere words, ghosts that walk
In the visions of the night,
Trembling with age,
Trembling to help.
Post 5.17.2012.1
Amphitryon: My child, I find it hard in such a case
To give advice offhand without hard thought.
We are weak and weakness can only wait.
Megara: Wait for worse? Do you still love life so much?
Amphitryon: I love it even now. I love its hopes.
Megara: And I.
But hope is of things possible.
Amphitryon: A cure may come in wearing out the time.
Megara: It is the time between that tortures me.
Amphitryon: Even now, out of our very evils,
For you and me a better wind may blow.
My son, your husband, still may come. Be calm,
Dry the living springs of tears that fill
Your children’s eyes.
Console them with stories,
Those sweet thieves of wretched make-believe.
Human misery must somewhere have a stop:
There is no wind that always blows a storm;
Great good fortune comes to failure in the end.
All is change; all yields its place and goes;
To persevere, trusting in what hopes he has,
Is courage in a man.
The coward despairs.
Monday, May 14, 2012
Post 5.14.2012.12
Cyclops: But the man’s a fool who drinks by himself.
Odysseus: It’s the wise man who stays home when he’s drunk.
Post 5.14.2012.11
Chorus: Happy the man who cries Evohe!
Stretched out full length and making merry,
For whom the wine keeps flowing,
Whose arms are open to his friend!
Lucky man, upon whose bed there blows
The soft bloom of a lovely girl
With gleaming hair, sweet with oil!
Who cries: “Who’ll open me the door?”
Post 5.14.2012.10
Cyclops: Money’s the wise man’s religion, little man.
The rest is mere bluff and purple patches.
I don’t give a damn for my father’s shrines
Along the coast!
Why did you think I would?
And I’m not afraid of Zeus’s thunder;
In fact, I don’t believe Zeus is stronger
Than I am. And
anyway I don’t care,
And I’ll tell you why I don’t care. When Zeus
Pours down rain, I take shelter in this cave
And feast myself on roast lamb or venison.
Then I stretch myself and wash down the meal,
Flooding my belly with a vat of milk.
Then, louder than ever Zeus can thunder,
I fart through the blankets. When the wind sweeps down
With snow from Thrace, I wrap myself in furs
And light up the fire.
Then let it snow
For all I care!
Whether it wants or not,
The earth must grow the grass that feeds my flocks.
And as for sacrifices, I make mine,
Not to the gods, but the greatest god of all,
This belly of mine!
To eat, to drink
From day to day, to have no worries –
That’s the real Zeus for your clever man!
As for those who embroider human life
With their little laws – damn the lot of them!
I shall go right on indulging myself –
By eating you.
But, to be clear,
I’ll be hospitable and give you fire,
And my father’s water – plus a cauldron.
Once it starts to boil, it will tender down
Your flesh very nicely.
So, inside with you,
And gather round the altar to the god
Of the cave, and wish him hearty eating.
Post 5.14.2012.9
Cyclops: you ought to die for shame: to go to war
With the Phrygians for a single woman!
Post 5.14.2012.8
Hippolytus: Zeus, do you see this,
See me that worshipped God in piety,
Me that excelled all men in chastity,
See me now go to death which gapes before me;
All my life lost, and all for nothing now
Labors of piety in the face of men.
Post 5.14.2012.7
Artemis: The Gods do not rejoice when pious worshippers die:
The wicked we destroy, children, house and all.
Post 5.14.2012.5
Hippolytus: Was rule so sweet? Never, I tell you, Theseus,
For the wise. A
man whom power has so enchanted
Must be demented.
I would wish to be
First in the contests of the Greeks,
But in the city I’d take second place,
And an enduring happy life among
The best society who are my friends.
So one has time to work, and danger’s absence
Has charms above the royal diadem.
Post 5.14.2012.4
Theseus: Read until you are demented
Your great thick books whose substance is as smoke.
Post 5.14.2012.3
Theseus: The mind of men – how far will it advance?
Where will its daring impudence find limits?
If human villainy and human life
Shall wax in due proportion, if the son
Shall always grow in wickedness past his father,
The Gods must add another world to this
That all the sinners may have space enough.
Post 5.14.2012.2
Theseus: What fools men are! You work and work for nothing;
You teach ten thousand tasks to one another,
Invent, discover everything. One thing only
You do not know: one thing you never hunt for –
A way to teach fools wisdom.
Post 5.14.2012.1
Theseus: My house is empty and my children orphaned.
You have left them, you
My loving wife –
The best of wives
Of all the sun looks down on or the blazing stars of the
night.
Saturday, May 12, 2012
Post 5.12.2012.32
Nurse: You will not break your oath to me, surely you will
not?
Hippolytus: My tongue swore, but my mind was still unpledged.
Post 5.12.2012.31
Chorus: Love is like a flitting bee in the world’s garden
And for its flowers, destruction is in his breath.
Post 5.12.2012.30
Chorus: Love distills desire upon the eyes,
Love brings bewitching grace into the heart
Of those he would destroy.
I pray that love may never come to me
With murderous intent,
In rhythms measureless and wild.
Not fire nor stars have stronger bolts
Than those of Aphrodite sent
By the hand of Eros, Zeus’s child.
Post 5.12.2012.29
Phaedra: This is the deadly thing which devastates
Well-ordered cities and the homes of men –
That’s it, this art of oversubtle words.
It’s not the words ringing delight in the ear
That one should speak, but those that have the power
To save their hearer’s honorable name.
Post 5.12.2012.28
Nurse: If in the sum you have more good luck than ill,
Count yourself fortunate – for you are mortal.
Post 5.12.2012.25
Phaedra: The proverb runs: ‘There is one thing alone
That stands the brunt of life throughout its course,
A quiet conscience,’ … a just and quiet conscience
Whoever can attain it.
Time holds a mirror, as for a young girl,
And sometimes as occasion falls, he shows us
The ugly rogues of the world. I would not wish
That I should be seen among them.
Post 5.12.2012.24
Phaedra: It would always be my choice
To have my virtues known and honored. So
When I do wrong I could not endure to see
A circle of condemning witnesses.
Post 5.12.2012.23
Phaedra: At first when love had struck me, I reflected
How best to bear it.
Silence was my first plan.
Silence and concealment. For the tongue
Is not to be trusted: it can criticize
Another’s faults, but on its own possessor
It brings a thousand troubles.
Post 5.12.2012.22
Phaedra: I have pondered on the cause of a life’s shipwreck.
I think that our lives are worse than the mind’s quality
Would warrant.
There are many who know virtue.
We know the good, we apprehend it clearly.
But we can’t bring it to achievement. Some
Are betrayed by their own laziness, and others
Value some other pleasures above virtue.
There are many pleasures in a woman’s life –
Long gossiping talks and leisure, that sweet curse.
Post 5.12.2012.20
Nurse: Love must not touch the marrow of the soul.
Our affections must be breakable chains that we
Can cast them off or tighten them.
Post 5.12.2012.19
Phaedra: Rightness of judgement is bitterness to the heart.
Madness is terrible.
It is better then
That I should die and know no more of anything.
Post 5.12.2012.17
Nurse: The life of man entire is misery:
He finds no resting place, no haven from calamity.
But something other dearer still than life
The darkness hides and mist encompasses;
We are proved luckless lovers of this thing
That glitters in the underworld: no man
Can tell us of the stuff of it, expounding
What is, and what is not: we know nothing of it.
Idly we drift, on idle stories carried.
Post 5.12.2012.16
Nurse: You find no constant pleasure anywhere
For when your joy is upon you, suddenly
You’re foiled and cheated.
There’s no content for you in what you have
For you’re forever finding something dearer,
Some other thing – because you have it not.
Post 5.12.2012.14
Servant: In men’s communities one rule holds good,
Do you know it, King?
Hippolytus: Not I.
What is this rule?
Servant: Men hate the haughty of heart who will not be
The friend of every man.
Hippolytus: And rightly too:
For haughty heart breeds arrogant demeanor.
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