Pray thou thy days be long before thy death,
  And full of ease and kingdom; seeing in death
  There is no comfort and none aftergrowth,
  Nor shall one thence look up and see day’s dawn
  Nor light upon the land whither I go. 
  Live thou and take thy fill of days and die
  When thy day comes; and make not much of death
  Lest ere thy day thou reap an evil thing. 
  Thou too, the bitter mother and mother-plague
  Of this my weary body—­thou too, queen,
  The source and end, the sower and the scythe,
  The rain that ripens and the drought that slays,
  The sand that swallows and the spring that feeds,
  To make me and unmake me—­thou, I say,
  Althaea, since my father’s ploughshare, drawn
  Through fatal seedland of a female field,
  Furrowed thy body, whence a wheaten ear
  Strong from the sun and fragrant from the rains
  I sprang and cleft the closure of thy womb,
  Mother, I dying with unforgetful tongue
  Hail thee as holy and worship thee as just
  Who art unjust and unholy; and with my knees
  Would worship, but thy fire and subtlety,
  Dissundering them, devour me; for these limbs
  Are as light dust and crumblings from mine urn
  Before the fire has touched them; and my face
  As a dead leaf or dead foot’s mark on snow,
  And all this body a broken barren tree
  That was so strong, and all this flower of life
  Disbranched and desecrated miserably,
  And minished all that god-like muscle and might
  And lesser than a man’s:  for all my veins
  Fail me, and all mine ashen life burns down. 
  I would thou hadst let me live; but gods averse,
  But fortune, and the fiery feet of change,
  And time, these would not, these tread out my life,
  These and not thou; me too thou hast loved, and I
  Thee; but this death was mixed with all my life,
  Mine end with my beginning:  and this law,
  This only, slays me, and not my mother at all. 
  And let no brother or sister grieve too sore,
  Nor melt their hearts out on me with their tears,
  Since extreme love and sorrowing overmuch
  Vex the great gods, and overloving men
  Slay and are slain for love’s sake; and this house
  Shall bear much better children; why should these
  Weep? but in patience let them live their lives
  And mine pass by forgotten:  thou alone,
  Mother, thou sole and only, thou not these,
  Keep me in mind a little when I die
  Because I was thy first-born; let thy soul
  Pity me, pity even me gone hence and dead,
  Though thou wert wroth, and though thou bear again
  Much happier sons, and all men later born
  Exceedingly excel me; yet do thou
  Forget not, nor think shame; I was thy son. 
  Time was I did not shame thee, and time was
  I thought to live and make thee honourable
  With deeds as great as these men’s; but they live,
  These, and I die; and what thing should