[Illustration: IPHIGENIA Anselm Feuerbach]
The king hath sent me hither, bade me greet With hail, and fair salute, Diana's priestess. For new and wondrous conquest, this the day, When to her goddess Tauris renders thanks. I hasten on before the king and host, Himself to herald, and its near approach.
We are prepar'd to give them worthy greeting; Our goddess doth behold with gracious eye The welcome sacrifice from Thoas' hand.
Would that I also found the priestess' eye, Much honor'd, much revered one, found thine eye, O consecrated maid, more calm, more bright, To all a happy omen! Still doth grief, With gloom mysterious, shroud thy inner mind; Vainly, through many a tedious year we wait For one confiding utterance from thy breast. Long as I've known thee in this holy place, That look of thine hath ever made me shudder; And, as with iron bands, thy soul remains Lock'd in the deep recesses of thy breast.
Dost thou then here seem exil'd and an orphan?
Can foreign scenes our fatherland replace?
Hence is it that my bleeding heart ne'er heals. In early youth, when first my soul, in love, Held father, mother, brethren fondly twin'd, A group of tender germs, in union sweet, We sprang in beauty from the parent stem, And heavenward grew; alas, a foreign curse Then seized and sever'd me from those I loved, And wrench'd with iron grasp the beauteous bands It vanish'd then, the fairest charm of youth, The simple gladness of life's early dawn; Though sav'd I was a shadow of myself, And life's fresh joyance blooms in me no more.
If thou wilt ever call thyself unblest, I must accuse thee of ingratitude.
Not the honest thanks Which prompt the heart to offices of love; The joyous glance, revealing to the host A grateful spirit, with its lot content. When thee a deep mysterious destiny Brought to this sacred fane, long years ago, To greet thee, as a treasure sent from heaven, With reverence and affection, Thoas came. Benign and friendly was this shore to thee, To every stranger else with horror fraught, For, till thy coming, none e'er trod our realm But fell, according to an ancient rite, A bloody victim at Diana's shrine.
Freely to breathe alone is not to live. Say, is it life, within this holy fane, Like a poor ghost around its sepulchre To linger out my days? Or call you that A life of conscious happiness and joy, When every hour, dream'd listlessly away, Still leadeth onward to those gloomy days, Which the sad troop of the departed spend In self-forgetfulness on Lethe's shore? A useless life is but an early death; This woman's destiny hath still been mine.