Otototoi,--groan: Away is mown
Thy flower, Zeus' offspring, City!
Unhappy Hellas, who dost cast (the pity!)
Who worked thee all the good,
Away from thee,--destroyest in a mood
Of Madness him, to death whom pipings dance!
There goes she, in her chariot,--groans, her brood
And gives her team the goad, as though adrift
For doom, Night's Gorgon, Madness, she whose glance
Turns man to marble! with what hissings lift
Their hundred heads the snakes, her head's inheritance!
Quick has the God changed fortune: through their sire
Quick will the children, that he saved, expire!
O miserable me! O Zeus! thy child--
Childless himself--soon vengeance, hunger-wild,
Craving for punishment, will lay how low--
Loaded with many a woe!
O palace-roofs! your courts about,
A measure begins all unrejoiced
By the tympanies and the thyrsos hoist
Of the Bromian revel-rout,
O ye domes! and the measure proceeds
For blood, not such as the cluster bleeds
Of the Dionusian pouring-out!
Break forth! fly, children! fatal this--
Fatal the lay that is piped, I wis!
Ay, for he hunts a children-chase--
Never shall madness lead her revel
And leave no trace in the dwelling-place!
Ai, ai, because of the evil!
Ai, ai, the old man--how I groan
For the father, and not the father alone!
She who was nurse of his children small,--small
Her gain that they never were born at all!
See! see!
A whirlwind shakes hither and thither
The house--the roof falls in together!
Ha, ha, what dost thou, son of Zeus?
A trouble of Tartaros broke loose,
Such as once Pallas on the Titan thundered,
Thou sendest on thy domes, roof-shattered and wall-sundered.