PR. Bid me not tell if ye have fear to hear; But have no fear. Knowledge of future things Can nothing change man's spirit: and though he seem To aim his passion darkly, like a shaft Shot toward some fearful sound in thickest night, He hath an owl's eye, and must blink at day. The springs of memory, that feed alike 1010 His thought and action, draw from furthest time Their constant source, and hardly brook constraint Of actual circumstance, far less attend On glassed futurity; nay, death itself, His fate unquestioned, his foretasted pain, The certainty foreknown of things unknown, Cannot discourage his habitual being In its appointed motions, to make waver His eager hand, nor loosen the desire Of the most feeble melancholy heart 1020 Even from the unhopefullest of all her dreams. IN. Since then I long to know, now something say Of what will come to mine when I am gone. PR. And let the maid too hear, for 'tis of her I speak, to tell her whither she should turn The day ye drive her forth from hearth and home. IN. What say'st thou? drive her out? and we? from home? Banish the comfort of our eyes? Nay rather Believe that these obedient hands will tear The heart out of my breast, ere it do this. 1030 PR. When her wild cries arouse the house at night, And, running to her bed, ye see her set Upright in trancèd sleep, her starting hair With deathly sweat bedewed, in horror shaking, Her eyeballs fixed upon the unbodied dark, Through which a draping mist of luminous gloom Drifts from her couch away,--when, if asleep, She walks as if awake, and if awake Dreams, and as one who nothing hears or sees, Lives in a sick and frantic mood, whose cause 1040 She understands not or is loth to tell-- AR. Ah, ah, my child, my child!--Dost thou feel aught? Speak to me--nay, 'tis nothing--hearken not. PR. Ye then distraught with sorrow, neither knowing Whether to save were best or lose, will seek Apollo's oracle. IN. And what the answer? Will it discover nought to avert this sorrow? PR. Or else thy whole race perish root and branch. IN. Alas! Alas! PR. Yet shall she live though lost; from human form Changed, that thou wilt not know thy daughter more. 1051 IN. Woe, woe! my thought was praying for her death. PR. In Hera's temple shall her prison be At high Mycenæ, till from heaven be sent Hermes, with song to soothe and sword to slay The beast whose hundred eyes devour the door. IN. Enough, enough is told, unless indeed, The beast once slain, thou canst restore our child.