Let me die;

What else remains for me?

 

Epimetheus.

 

Youth, hope, and love:

To build a new life on a ruined life,

To make the future fairer than the past,

And make the past appear a troubled dream.

Even now in passing through the garden walks

Upon the ground I saw a fallen nest

Ruined and full of rain; and over me

Beheld the uncomplaining birds already

Busy in building a new habitation.

 

Pandora.

 

Auspicious omen!

 

Epimetheus.

 

May the Eumenides

Put out their torches and behold us not,

And fling away their whips of scorpions

And touch us not.

 

Pandora.

 

Me let them punish.

Only through punishment of our evil deeds,

Only through suffering, are we reconciled

To the immortal Gods and to ourselves.

 

Chorus of the Eumenides.

 

Never shall souls like these

Escape the Eumenides,

The daughters dark of Acheron and Night!

Unquenched our torches glare,

Our scourges in the air

Send forth prophetic sounds before they smite.

 

Never by lapse of time

The soul defaced by crime

Into its former self returns again;

For every guilty deed

Holds in itself the seed

Of retribution and undying pain.

 

Never shall be the loss

Restored, till Helios

Hath purified them with his heavenly fires;

Then what was lost is won,

And the new life begun,

Kindled with nobler passions and desires.

 

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