MESSENGER
Dear mistress, I was there and will relate
The perfect truth, omitting not one word. 
Why should we gloze and flatter, to be proved
Liars hereafter?  Truth is ever best. 
Well, in attendance on my liege, your lord,
I crossed the plain to its utmost margin, where
The corse of Polyneices, gnawn and mauled,
Was lying yet.  We offered first a prayer
To Pluto and the goddess of cross-ways,
With contrite hearts, to deprecate their ire. 
Then laved with lustral waves the mangled corse,
Laid it on fresh-lopped branches, lit a pyre,
And to his memory piled a mighty mound
Of mother earth.  Then to the caverned rock,
The bridal chamber of the maid and Death,
We sped, about to enter.  But a guard
Heard from that godless shrine a far shrill wail,
And ran back to our lord to tell the news. 
But as he nearer drew a hollow sound
Of lamentation to the King was borne. 
He groaned and uttered then this bitter plaint: 
“Am I a prophet? miserable me! 
Is this the saddest path I ever trod? 
’Tis my son’s voice that calls me.  On press on,
My henchmen, haste with double speed to the tomb
Where rocks down-torn have made a gap, look in
And tell me if in truth I recognize
The voice of Haemon or am heaven-deceived.” 
So at the bidding of our distraught lord
We looked, and in the craven’s vaulted gloom
I saw the maiden lying strangled there,
A noose of linen twined about her neck;
And hard beside her, clasping her cold form,
Her lover lay bewailing his dead bride
Death-wedded, and his father’s cruelty. 
When the King saw him, with a terrible groan
He moved towards him, crying, “O my son
What hast thou done?  What ailed thee?  What mischance
Has reft thee of thy reason?  O come forth,
Come forth, my son; thy father supplicates.” 
But the son glared at him with tiger eyes,
Spat in his face, and then, without a word,
Drew his two-hilted sword and smote, but missed
His father flying backwards.  Then the boy,
Wroth with himself, poor wretch, incontinent
Fell on his sword and drove it through his side
Home, but yet breathing clasped in his lax arms
The maid, her pallid cheek incarnadined
With his expiring gasps.  So there they lay
Two corpses, one in death.  His marriage rites
Are consummated in the halls of Death: 
A witness that of ills whate’er befall
Mortals’ unwisdom is the worst of all.
[Exit EURYDICE]

CHORUS
What makest thou of this?  The Queen has gone
Without a word importing good or ill.

MESSENGER
I marvel too, but entertain good hope. 
’Tis that she shrinks in public to lament
Her son’s sad ending, and in privacy
Would with her maidens mourn a private loss. 
Trust me, she is discreet and will not err.

CHORUS
I know not, but strained silence, so I deem,
Is no less ominous than excessive grief.