Thou art my child, if that is what a parent holds most dear.IonAn end to thy web of falsehood! Right well will I convict thee.CreusaMy child, that is my aim; God grant I reach it!IonIs this ark empty, or hath it aught within?CreusaThy raiment wherein I exposed thee long ago.IonWilt put a name thereto before thou see it?CreusaUnless I describe it, I offer to die.IonSay on; there is something strange in this thy confidence.CreusaBehold the robe my childish fingers wove.IonDescribe it; maidens weave many a pattern.Creusa’Tis not perfect, but a first lesson, as it were, in weaving.IonDescribe its form; thou shalt not catch me thus.CreusaA Gorgon figures in the centre of the warp.IonGreat Zeus! what fate is this that dogs my steps?Creusa’Tis fringed with snakes like an aegis.IonLo! ’tis the very robe; how true we find the voice of God!CreusaAh! woven work that erst my virgin shuttle wrought.IonIs there aught beside, or stays thy lucky guessing here?CreusaThere be serpents, too, with jaws of gold, an old-world symbol.IonThis line is assigned to Creusa in the Greek. Is that Athena’s gift, bidding her race grow up under their guardianship?CreusaYes, to copy our ancestor Erichthonius.IonWhat is their object? what the use of these golden gauds? pray, tell.CreusaNecklaces for the new-born babe to wear, my child.IonLo! here they lie. Yet would I know the third sign.CreusaAbout thy brow I bound an olive-wreath that day, plucked from the tree Athena first made grow on her own rock. If haply that is there, it hath not lost its verdure yet, but still is fresh, for it came from the stock that grows not old.IonMother, dearest mother, with what rapture I behold thee, as on thy cheeks, that share my joy, I press my lips!CreusaMy son, light that in thy mother’s eye outshinest yonder sun,—I know the god will pardon me,—in my arms I hold thee, whom I never hoped to find, for I thought thy home was in that nether world, among the ghosts with Queen Persephone.IonAh, dear mother mine! within thy arms I rest, the dead now brought to light, and dead no more.