Page:Four Plays of Aeschylus (1908) Morshead.djvu/176

146 Near, nearer comes the wreck—

And all is lost, cast out upon the wave,

Floating, with none to save!

Whom did the gods, whom did the chief of men,

Whom did each citizen

In crowded concourse, in such honour hold,

As Oedipus of old,

When the grim fiend, that fed on human prey,

He took from us away?

But when, in the fulness of days, he knew of his bridal unblest,

A twofold horror he wrought, in the frenzied despair of his breast—

Debarred from the grace of the banquet, the service of goblets of gold,

He flung on his children a curse for the splendour they dared to withhold,

A curse prophetic and bitter—The glory of wealth and of pride,

With iron, not gold, in your hands, ye shall come, at the last, to divide!

Behold, how a shudder runs through me, lest now, in the fulness of time,

The house-fiend awake and return, to mete out the measure of crime!

[Enter.

Wake heart, ye daughters whom your mothers' milk

Made milky-hearted! lo, our city stands,

Saved from the yoke of servitude: the vaunts

Of overweening men are silent now,