Page:Four Plays of Aeschylus (1908) Morshead.djvu/225

Rh Th' embrace of Zeus, but hie thee forth straightway

To the lush growth of Lerna's meadow-land,

Where are the flocks and steadings of thy home,

And let Zeus' eye be eased of its desire.

Night after night, haunted by dreams like these,

Heartsick, I ventured at the last to tell

Unto my sire these visions of the dark.

Then sent he many a wight, on sacred quest,

To Delphi and to far Dodona's shrine,

Being full fain to learn what deed or word

Would win him favour from the powers of heaven.

But they came back repeating oracles

Mystic, ambiguous, inscrutable,

Till, at the last, an utterance direct,

Obscure no more, was brought to Inachus—

A peremptory charge to fling me forth

Beyond my home and fatherland, a thing

Sent loose in banishment o'er all the world;

And—should he falter—Zeus should launch on him

A fire-eyed bolt, to shatter and consume

Himself and all his race to nothingness.

Bowing before such utterance from the shrine

Of Loxias, he drave me from our halls,

Barring the gates against me: loth he was

To do, as I to suffer, this despite:

But the strong curb of Zeus had overborne

His will to me-ward. As I parted thence,

In form and mind I grew dishumanized,

And horned as now ye see me, poison-stung

By the envenomed bitings of the brize,

I leapt and flung in frenzy, rushed away

To the bright waters of Cerchneia's stream

And Lerna's beach: but ever at my side,

A herdsman by his heifer, Argus moved,

Earth-born, malevolent of mood, and peered,