NURSE <br /> <br />Our mistress bids me with all speed to call <br />Aegisthus to the strangers, that he come <br />And hear more clearly, as a man from man, <br />This newly brought report. Before her slaves, <br />Under set eyes of melancholy cast, <br />She hid her inner chuckle at the events <br />That have been brought to pass--too well for her, <br />But for this house and hearth most miserably,-- <br />As in the tale the strangers clearly told. <br />He, when he hears and learns the story's gist, <br />Will joy, I trow, in heart. Ah, wretched me! <br />How those old troubles, of all sorts made up, <br />Most hard to bear, in Atreus's palace-halls <br />Have made my heart full heavy in my breast! <br />But never have I known a woe like this. <br />For other ills I bore full patiently, <br />But as for dear Orestes, my sweet charge, <br />Whom from his mother I received and nursed . . . <br />And then the shrill cries rousing me o' nights, <br />And many and unprofitable toils <br />For me who bore them. For one needs must rear <br />The heedless infant like an animal, <br />(How can it else be?) as his humor serve <br />For while a child is yet in swaddling clothes, <br />It speaketh not, if either hunger comes, <br />Or passing thirst, or lower calls of need; <br />And children's stomach works its own content. <br />And I, though I foresaw this, call to mind, <br />How I was cheated, washing swaddling clothes, <br />And nurse and laundress did the selfsame work. <br />I then with these my double handicrafts, <br />Brought up Orestes for his father dear; <br />And now, woe's me! I learn that he is dead, <br />And go to fetch the man that mars this house; <br />And gladly will he hear these words of mine.<br /><br />Aeschylus<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-lament-of-the-old-nurse/
