this desolate
seaboard. Thus with o'erweening scorn doth bitter Fate in my extreme hour
even grudge ears to my plaints. All-powerful Jupiter! would that in old
time the Cecropian poops had not touched at the Gnossian shores, nor that
bearing to the unquelled bull the direful ransom had the false mariner
moored his hawser to Crete, nor that yon wretch hiding ruthless designs
beneath sweet seemings had reposed as a guest in our halls! For whither may
I flee? in what hope, O lost one, take refuge? Shall I climb the Idomenean
crags? but the truculent sea stretching amain with its whirlings of waters
separates us. Can I quest help from my father, whom I deserted to follow a
youth besprinkled with my brother's blood? Can I crave comfort from the
care of a faithful yokeman, who is fleeing with yielding oars, encurving
'midst whirling waters. If I turn from the beach there is no roof in this
tenantless island, no way sheweth a passage, circled by waves of the sea;
no way of flight, no hope; all denotes dumbness, desolation, and death.
Natheless mine eyes shall not be dimmed in death, nor my senses secede from
my spent frame, until I have besought from the gods a meet mulct for my
betrayal, and implored the faith of the celestials with my latest breath.
Wherefore ye requiters of men's deeds with avenging pains, O Eumenides,
whose front enwreathed with serpent-locks blazons the wrath exhaled from
your bosom, hither, hither haste, hear ye my plainings, which I, sad
wretch, am urged to outpour from mine innermost marrow, helpless, burning,
and blind with frenzied fury. And since in truth they spring from the
veriest depths of my heart, be ye unwilling to allow my agony to pass
unheeded, but with such mind as Theseus forsook me, with like mind, O
goddesses, may he bring evil on himself and on his kin."

After she had poured forth these words from her grief-laden bosom,
distractedly clamouring for requital against his heartless deeds, the
celestial ruler assented with almighty nod, at whose motion the earth and
the awe-full waters quaked, and the world of glittering stars did quiver.
But Theseus, self-blinded with mental mist, let slip from forgetful breast
all those injunctions which until then he had held firmly in mind, nor bore
aloft sweet signals to his sad sire, shewing himself safe when in sight of
Erectheus' haven. For 'tis said that aforetime, when Aegeus entrusted his
son to the winds, on leaving the walls of the chaste godde