The Lament Of The Old Nurse

A poem by Aeschylus (c. 525 – c. 456 Before Christ )

NURSE

Our mistress bids me with all speed to call

Aegisthus to the strangers, that he come

And hear more clearly, as a man from man,

This newly brought report. Before her slaves,

Under set eyes of melancholy cast,

She hid her inner chuckle at the events

That have been brought to pass–too well for her,

But for this house and hearth most miserably,–

As in the tale the strangers clearly told.

He, when he hears and learns the story’s gist,

Will joy, I trow, in heart. Ah, wretched me!

How those old troubles, of all sorts made up,

Most hard to bear, in Atreus’s palace-halls

Have made my heart full heavy in my breast!

But never have I known a woe like this.

For other ills I bore full patiently,

But as for dear Orestes, my sweet charge,

Whom from his mother I received and nursed . . .

And then the shrill cries rousing me o’ nights,

And many and unprofitable toils

For me who bore them. For one needs must rear

The heedless infant like an animal,

(How can it else be?) as his humor serve

For while a child is yet in swaddling clothes,

It speaketh not, if either hunger comes,

Or passing thirst, or lower calls of need;

And children’s stomach works its own content.

And I, though I foresaw this, call to mind,

How I was cheated, washing swaddling clothes,

And nurse and laundress did the selfsame work.

I then with these my double handicrafts,

Brought up Orestes for his father dear;

And now, woe’s me! I learn that he is dead,

And go to fetch the man that mars this house;

And gladly will he hear these words of mine.

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• Four Quartets 3: The Dry Salvages by T. S. Eliot by Thomas Stearns Eliot (TS Eliot)
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• Dans le Restaurant by T. S. Eliot by Thomas Stearns Eliot (TS Eliot)
• Cousin Nancy by T. S. Eliot by Thomas Stearns Eliot (TS Eliot)
• Conversation Galante by T. S. Eliot by Thomas Stearns Eliot (TS Eliot)
• Bustopher Jones: The Cat About Town by T. S. Eliot by Thomas Stearns Eliot (TS Eliot)
• Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar by T. S. Eliot by Thomas Stearns Eliot (TS Eliot)
• Aunt Helen by T. S. Eliot by Thomas Stearns Eliot (TS Eliot)
• Ash Wednesday by T. S. Eliot by Thomas Stearns Eliot (TS Eliot)
• A Cooking Egg by T. S. Eliot by Thomas Stearns Eliot (TS Eliot)
• Woman by Tala Bar by Poetry In English
• Walk with Me by Tammy L Ames by Poetry In English
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