For Deianeira, as I hear, hath ever an aching heart; she, the battle-prize
of old, is now like some bird lorn of its mate; she can never lull
her yearning, nor stay her tears; haunted by a sleepless fear for
her absent lord, she pines on her anxious, widowed couch, miserable
in her foreboding of mischance.
(strophe 2)
As one may see billow after billow driven over the wide deep by the
tireless south-wind or the north, so the trouble of his life, stormy
as the Cretan sea, now whirls back the son of Cadmus, now lifts him
to honour. But some god ever saves him from the house of death, and
suffers him not to fail.
(antistrophe 2)
Lady, I praise not this thy mood; with all reverence will I speak,
yet in reproof. Thou dost not well, I say, to kill fair hope by fretting;
remember that the son of Cronus himself, the all-disposing king, hath
not appointed a painless lot for mortals. Sorrow and joy come round
to all, as the Bear moves in his circling paths.
Studies
