Ajax monologue — Specimens of Greek Tragedy — Aeschylus and Sophocles

The sword is set where it may best strike home, If leisure were to dally with such thoughts, The sword that Hector gave, the bitterest foe And worst that I did ever treat withal; And it is planted in the soil of Troy, That hostile soil, fresh whetted for its work. Carefully have I fixed it where it stands, That quickly I may die, and painlessly. So far all's well; in what comes now, O Zeus, On thee for aid, and with good right, I call. 'Tis no great favour that I crave of thee: Let some one bear to Teucer the ill news, That he may be the first to lift my corpse From off the sword, fresh streaming with my blood. Let me not, by some foeman first espied, Be cast a prey to carrion fowl and dogs. This, Zeus, I ask of thee, and I invoke Hermes, who leads the dead, that at one bound Pierced through, and with no lingering agony I may be laid in my eternal sleep. Last on the dread Erinnyes I call, That ever-virgin sisterhood, who see All that is done among mankind, to mark How the Atridae have my ruin wrought. Come, ye swift powers of retribution, come, And flesh you on the whole Achaean host. Thou sun, whose chariot traverses the sky, When on my native land thou lookest down, Draw for a while thy glittering rein, and tell The story of my madness and my doom To my grey-headed father, and to her That bare me, and that when she hears this news Will make the city echo with her wail. But to no purpose are these weak laments; The thing must now be done, and done with speed. O death, O death, come and thy office do; Long, where I go, our fellowship will be. O thou glad daylight, which I now behold, O sun, that ridest in the firmament, I greet you, and shall greet you never more. O light, O sacred soil of my own land, O my ancestral home, my Salamis, Famed Athens and my old Athenian mates, Rivers and springs and plains of Troy, farewell; Farewell all things in which I lived my life; 'Tis the last word of Ajax to you all, When next I speak 'twill be to those below.