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Who with bitter revilings evil-entreateth her youth alway:

And her heart as she waileth is cramped as by chains in her frenzied despair,

That she cannot sob forth the anguish that struggleth for utterance there:

So stintlessly wept Alkimedê, so in her arms did she strain

Her son; and she cried from the depths of her love and her yearning pain:

‘Oh, that on that same day when I, the affliction-oppressed,

Hearkened the voice of Pelias the king, and his evil behest,

I had yielded up the ghost, and forgotten to mourn and to weep,{280}

That thyself, that thine own dear hands, in the grave might have laid me to sleep,

O my beloved!—for this was the one wish unfulfilled:

But with other thy nursing-dues long had mine heart in contentment been stilled.

And I, of Achaia’s daughters the envied in days that are gone,

Like a bondwoman now in tenantless halls shall be left alone,

Pining, a hapless mother, in yearning for thee, my pride

And exceeding delight in the days overpast, for whom I untied

For the first time and last my zone; for to me beyond others the doom