Peleus.
No city is mine—none now!
Down, sceptre, in dust lie thou!
Thou, Daughter of Nereus, from twilight of thy sea-hall
Shalt behold me, in ruin and wrack to the earth as I fall.
Chorus.
What ho! what ho!
What stir in the air, what fragrance divine?
Look yonder!—O mark it, companions mine!
Some God through the stainless sky doth speed;
And the car swings low
To the plains of Phthia the nurse of the steed. 1230
Thetis descends to the stage.
Thetis.
Peleus, for mine espousals' sake of old
To thee, I Thetis come from Nereus' halls.
And, first, I counsel thee, repine not thou
Overmuch for the woes that compass thee.
I too, who ought to have borne no child of sorrow, 1235
Lost him I bare to thee, my fleetfoot son,
Achilles, who in Hellas had no peer.
Now hearken while I tell my coming's cause:
Thou to the Pythian temple journey; there
Bury thou this thy dead, Achilles' seed, 1240
Delphi's reproach, that his tomb may proclaim
His death, his murder, by Orestes' hand.
And that war-captive dame, Andromachê,
In the Molossian land must find a home
In lawful wedlock joined to Helenus, 1245
