Читать книгу The Greatest German Classics (Vol. 1-14) - Various - Страница 1290

Fling now, O sisters, ye

Captives who mourn your lot,

All your sorrows far from you.

Share ye your mistress' joy!

Share ye Helena's joy,

Who to the dear paternal hearth,

Though returning full late in sooth,

Nathless with surer, firmer tread

Joyfully now approaches!

Praise ye the holy ones,

Happy restoring ones,

God's, the home-leaders, praise ye!

Soars the enfranchised one,

As upon out-spread wings,

Over the roughest fate, while in vain

Pines the captured one, yearning-fraught

Over the prison-battlements

Arms out-stretching, in anguish.

Nathless her a god hath seized,

The exiled one,

And from Ilion's wreck

Bare her hitherward back once more,

To the ancient, the newly-adornèd

Father-house,

After unspeakable

Pleasure and anguish,

Earlier youthful time,

Newly quicken'd, to ponder.

PENTHALIS (as leader of the chorus)

Forsake ye now of song the joy-surrounded path,

As toward the portal-wings turn ye forthwith your gaze!

What see I, sisters? Here, returneth not the queen?

With step of eager haste, comes she not back to us?—

What is it, mighty queen, that in the palace-halls,

Instead of friendly hail, could there encounter thee,

And shatter thus thy being? Thou conceal'st it not;

For I abhorrence see, impressed upon thy brow,

And noble anger, that contendeth with surprise.

HELENA (who has left the folded doors open, excited)

No vulgar fear beseems the daughter of high Zeus,

And her no lightly-fleeting terror-hand may touch;

But that dire horror which, from womb of ancient Night,

In time primeval rising, still in divers shapes,

Like lurid clouds, from out the mountain's fiery gorge,

Whirls itself forth, may shake even the hero's breast.

Thus have the Stygian Gods, with horror fraught, today

Mine entrance to the house so marked, that fain I am,

Back from the oft-time trod, long-yearned-for threshold now,

Like to a guest dismissed, departing, to retire.

Yet no, retreated have I hither to the light;

No further shall ye drive me, Powers, who'er ye be!

Some expiation, I'll devise, then purified,

The hearth-flame welcome may the consort as the lord.