Page:Four Plays of Aeschylus (1908) Morshead.djvu/201

Rh Nor can whatever pang may smite me now

Smite with surprise. The destiny ordained

I must endure to the best, for well I wot

That none may challenge with Necessity.

Yet is it past my patience, to reveal,

Or to conceal, these issues of my doom.

Since I to mortals brought prerogatives,

Unto this durance dismal am I bound:

Yea, I am he who in a fennel-stalk,

By stealthy sleight, purveyed the fount of fire,

The teacher, proven thus, and arch-resource

Of every art that aideth mortal men.

Such was my sin: I earn its recompense,

Rock-riveted, and chained in height and cold.

Listen! what breath of sound, what fragrance soft hath risen

Upward to me? is it some godlike essence,

Or being half-divine, or mortal presence?

Who to the world's end comes, unto my craggy prison?

Craves he the sight of pain, or what would he behold?

Gaze on a god in tortures manifold,

Heinous to Zeus, and scorned by all

Whose footsteps tread the heavenly hall,

Because too deeply, from on high,

I pitied man's mortality!

Hark, and again! that fluttering sound

Of wings that whirr and circle round,

And their light rustle thrills the air—

How all things that unseen draw near

Are to me Fear!

[Enter the , in winged cars.