Free Four Tragedies and Octavia by Séneca Page B

seen
    Protruding from the back; the boy fell dead,
    His spurting blood damped out the altar fires
    And through both wounds his spirit fled away.
    CHORUS : Inhuman outrage.
    MESSENGER :                     Do you shudder now?
    If this had been the end of his foul deed,
    You could have called him innocent.
    CHORUS :                                                What more?
    What more stupendous, more atrocious crime
    Can man conceive?
    MESSENGER :            No, this was not the end,
    Only a step upon the villain’s way.
    CHORUS : Could he do more? He threw the bodies out
    For beasts to maul – denied them funeral fire?
    MESSENGER : Denied them fire! Ah, would that that were so!
    Would that he had denied them burial,
    Denied them the consuming flames, left them
    To be a meal for birds, a hideous banquet
    For savage beasts! Well might their father pray
    For what most fathers would abhor to see –
    The unburied bodies of his sons. O sin
    Incredible to any age of man,
    And for the men of ages yet to come
    A thing to be declared impossible!…
    The entrails torn from the warm bodies lay
    Quivering, veins still throbbing, shocked hearts beating.
    Atreus picked at the pieces, scrutinized
    The message of the Fates, noted the signs
    In the internal organs hot with blood.
    Finding no blemish in the sacrifice,
    He was content, and ready to prepare
    The banquet for his brother; hacked the bodies
    Limb from limb – detached the outstretched arms
    Close to the shoulders – severed the ligaments
    That tie the elbow joints – stripped every part
    And roughly wrenched each separate bone away –
    All this he did himself; only the faces,
    And trusting suppliant hands, he left intact.
    And soon the meat is on the spits, the fat
    Drips over a slow fire, while other parts
    Are tossed to boil in singing copper pans.
    The fire seems loth to touch the roasting flesh;
    Two or three times it has to be repaired
    To feed the crackling hearth, and still, reluctant
    To do as it is told, burns sulkily.
    The liver on the spits was heard to squeal;
    Which cried the more, the bodies or the fires,
    It would be hard to say. Above the flames
    A pitch-black smoke ascended, and this too
    Refused to rise up to the roof, but hung
    A thick and noisome cloud, filling the house
    With hideous vapours. Then… O patient Phoebus!
    Thy light was sunk in darkness at mid-day
    And thou hadst fled – thou shouldst have left us sooner!
    The father bites into his children’s bodies,
    Chews his own flesh in his accursed mouth.
    Drowsy with wine, his glistening hair anointed
    With scented oil, he crams his mouth with food
    Till it can hold no more. O doomed Thyestes!
    This is the one good part of your misfortune:
    You know not what you suffer. Not for long
    Will this be true. The Lord of Heaven, the Sun
    May turn his chariot back and drive away;
    Black night may rise untimely from the east,
    And total darkness in the midst of day
    Veil this atrocious deed; but you must see
    And know your own misfortune to the full.
CHORUS
    O Father of all earth and all that lives,
    Whose rising banishes the lesser lights
    That make the dark night beautiful:
    Why hast thou turned aside
    From thy appointed path?
    Why hast thou blotted out the day
    And fled from heaven’s centre? Why,
    O Phoebus, hast thou turned thy face from us?
    Vesper, the herald of the close of day,
    Is not yet here to usher in the stars;
    Thy wheel has not yet passed the western gate
    Where, with their day’s work done,
    Thy steeds should be unyoked. We have not heard
    The third note of the trumpet telling us
    That day is over.
    Ploughmen will stand amazed –
    Suddenly supper-time, and oxen not yet ready to rest!
    What can have forced you,