A. E. Housman, Fragment of a Greek Tragedy

A. E. Housman, by  Francis Dodd

If you're not familiar with Housman's parody of Greek Tragedy, you don't know what you been missing. If you've ever read Aeschylus, Sophocles, or Euripides in the original, this will be an amazing treat.

FRAGMENT OF A GREEK TRAGEDY

by A. E. Housman

                CHORUS:  O suitably-attired-in-leather-boots
          Head of a traveller, wherefore seeking whom
          Whence by what way how purposed art thou come
          To this well-nightingaled vicinity?
          My object in inquiring is to know.
          But if you happen to be deaf and dumb
          And do not understand a word I say,
          Then wave your hand, to signify as much.

                ALCMAEON: I journeyed hither a Boetian road.
                CHORUS: Sailing on horseback, or with feet for oars?
                ALCMAEON: Plying with speed my partnership of legs.
                CHORUS: Beneath a shining or a rainy Zeus?
                ALCMAEON: Mud's sister, not himself, adorns my shoes.
                CHORUS: To learn your name would not displease me much.
                ALCMAEON: Not all that men desire do they obtain.
                CHORUS: Might I then hear at what thy presence shoots.
                ALCMAEON: A shepherd's questioned mouth informed me that--
                CHORUS: What? for I know not yet what you will say.
                ALCMAEON: Nor will you ever, if you interrupt.
                CHORUS: Proceed, and I will hold my speechless tongue.
                ALCMAEON: This house was Eriphyle's, no one else's.
                CHORUS: Nor did he shame his throat with shameful lies.
                ALCMAEON: May I then enter, passing through the door?
                CHORUS: Go chase into the house a lucky foot.
          And, O my son, be, on the one hand, good,
          And do not, on the other hand, be bad;
          For that is very much the safest plan.
                ALCMAEON: I go into the house with heels and speed.

                CHORUS

                         Strophe

          In speculation
          I would not willingly acquire a name
                For ill-digested thought;
                But after pondering much
          To this conclusion I at last have come:
                LIFE IS UNCERTAIN.
                This truth I have written deep
                In my reflective midriff
                On tablets not of wax,
          Nor with a pen did I inscribe it there,
          For many reasons:  LIFE, I say, IS NOT
                A STRANGER TO UNCERTAINTY.
          Not from the flight of omen-yelling fowls
                This fact did I discover,
          Nor did the Delphine tripod bark it out,
                Nor yet Dodona.
          Its native ingenuity sufficed
                My self-taught diaphragm.

                       Antistrophe

                Why should I mention
          The Inachean daughter, loved of Zeus?
                Her whom of old the gods,
                More provident than kind,
          Provided with four hoofs, two horns, one tail,
                A gift not asked for,
                And sent her forth to learn
                The unfamiliar science
                Of how to chew the cud.
          She therefore, all about the Argive fields,
          Went cropping pale green grass and nettle-tops,
                Nor did they disagree with her.
          But yet, howe'er nutritious, such repasts
                I do not hanker after:
          Never may Cypris for her seat select
                My dappled liver!
          Why should I mention Io?  Why indeed?
                I have no notion why.

                      Epode

                But now does my boding heart,
                Unhired, unaccompanied, sing
                A strain not meet for the dance.
                Yes even the palace appears
                To my yoke of circular eyes
                (The right, nor omit I the left)
                Like a slaughterhouse, so to speak,
                Garnished with woolly deaths
                And many sphipwrecks of cows.
          I therefore in a Cissian strain lament:
                And to the rapid
                Loud, linen-tattering thumps upon my chest
                Resounds in concert
          The battering of my unlucky head.

                ERIPHYLE (within): O, I am smitten with a hatchet's jaw;
          And that in deed and not in word alone.
                CHORUS: I thought I heard a sound within the house
          Unlike the voice of one that jumps for joy.
                ERIPHYLE: He splits my skull, not in a friendly way,
          Once more: he purposes to kill me dead.
                CHORUS: I would not be reputed rash, but yet
          I doubt if all be gay within the house.
                ERIPHYLE: O! O! another stroke! that makes the third.
          He stabs me to the heart against my wish.
                CHORUS:  If that be so, thy state of health is poor;
          But thine arithmetic is quite correct.