Title:  Iphigenia in Tauris

Author:  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Translator:  Anna Swanwick

Release Date:  May 18, 2005 [EBook #15850]

Language:  English

Character set encoding:  ASCII

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Handy Literal Translations

Goethe’s

Iphigenia In Tauris

Translated by Anna Swanwick

ArthurHinds & Co.
4 Cooper Institute, new York city

Iphigeniain Tauris.

Personsof the drama.

Iphigenia.     Thoas, King of the Taurians. 
Orestes.       Pylades.       Arkas.

Actthe first.

SceneI.
A Grove before the Temple of Diana.

                Iphigenia. 

Beneath your leafy gloom, ye waving boughs
Of this old, shady, consecrated grove,
As in the goddess’ silent sanctuary,
With the same shudd’ring feeling forth I step,
As when I trod it first, nor ever here
Doth my unquiet spirit feel at home. 
Long as the mighty will, to which I bow,
Hath kept me here conceal’d, still, as at first,
I feel myself a stranger.  For the sea
Doth sever me, alas! from those I love,
And day by day upon the shore I stand,
My soul still seeking for the land of Greece. 
But to my sighs, the hollow-sounding waves
Bring, save their own hoarse murmurs, no reply. 
Alas for him! who friendless and alone,
Remote from parents and from brethren dwells;
From him grief snatches every coming joy
Ere it doth reach his lip.  His restless thoughts
Revert for ever to his father’s halls,
Where first to him the radiant sun unclos’d
The gates of heav’n; where closer, day by day,
Brothers and sisters, leagu’d in pastime sweet,
Around each other twin’d the bonds of love. 
I will not judge the counsel of the gods;
Yet, truly, woman’s lot doth merit pity. 
Man rules alike at home and in the field,
Nor is in foreign climes without resource;
Possession gladdens him, him conquest crowns,
And him an honourable death awaits. 
How circumscrib’d is woman’s destiny! 
Obedience to a harsh, imperious lord,
Her duty, and her comfort; sad her fate,
Whom hostile fortune drives to lands remote: 
Thus I, by noble Thoas, am detain’d,
Bound with a heavy, though a sacred chain. 
Oh! with what shame, Diana, I confess
That with repugnance I perform these rites
For thee, divine protectress! unto whom