Then Ajax comes forward again. His better nature has been touched—perhaps more by the allusions to his beloved island than by any awakened tenderness for Tecmessa. He addresses the Chorus, and there is no necessity for supposing his speech to be spoken with studied artifice: if there is artifice, it is the poet's "irony." Or it may be that he "desires, half in pity and half in scorn, to disguise from his listeners a purpose too great for their sympathy."[1] But whatever may have been the intention of the words, their purport is that his heart has been melted within him: he will atone for his rash deeds: he will purify himself from the stain of blood, that so he may find rest for his soul.
This famous farewell speech is worthy of being given in full, and the following is Mr Calverley's admirable translation:—
"All strangest things the multitudinous years
Bring forth, and shadow from us all we know.
Falter alike great oath and steeled resolve;
And none shall say of aught, 'This may not be.'
Lo! I myself, but yesterday so strong
As new-dipt steel, am weak and all unsexed
By yonder woman: yea I mourn for them,
Widow and orphan, left amid their foes.
But I will journey seaward—where the shore
Lies meadow-fringed—so haply wash away
My sin, and flee that wrath that weighs me down,
And, lighting somewhere on an untrodden way,
I will bury this my sword, this hateful thing,
Deep in some earth-hole where no eye shall see—
