Читать книгу The Greatest German Classics (Vol. 1-14) - Various - Страница 1285

Enough! I with my spouse, ship-borne, have hither sped,

And to his city now by him before am sent.

But what the thought he harbors, that I cannot guess.

Come I as consort hither? Come I as a queen?

Come I as victim for the prince's bitter pangs,

And for the evils dire, long suffered by the Greeks?

Conquered I am; but whether captive, know I not:

For the Immortal Powers fortune and fame for me

Have doomed ambiguous; direful ministers that wait

On beauty's form, who even on this threshold here,

With dark and threat'ning mien, stand bodeful at my side!

Already, ere we left the hollow ship, my spouse

Looked seldom on me, spake no comfortable word;

As though he mischief brooded, facing me he sat.

But now, when to Eurotas' deeply curving shores

Steering our course, scarce had our foremost vessel's beak

The land saluted, spake he, as by God inspired:

"Here let my men of war, in ordered ranks, disbark;

I marshal them, drawn up upon the ocean strand;

But thou, pursue thy way, not swerving from the banks,

Laden with fruit, that bound Eurotas' sacred stream,

Thy coursers guiding o'er the moist enamelled meads,

Until thou may'st arrive at that delightful plain,

Where Lacedæmon, once a broad fruit-bearing field,

By mountains stern surrounded lifteth now its walls.

Set thou thy foot within the tower-crown'd princely house,

Assemble thou the maids, whom I at parting left,

And with them summon too the wise old stewardess.

Bid her display to thee the treasures' ample store,

As by thy sire bequeathed, and which, in peace and war,

Increasing evermore, I have myself up-piled.

All standing shalt thou find in ancient order; for,

This is the prince's privilege, that to his home,

When he returns at last, safe everything he finds,

Each in its proper place, as he hath left it there.

For nothing of himself the slave hath power to change."