Page:Four Plays of Aeschylus (1908) Morshead.djvu/94

64 Some by the way of the waves, and some o'er the planking have pressed.

For the king is a lord and a god: he was born of the golden seed

That erst upon Danae fell—his captains are strong at the need!

And dark is the glare of his eyes, as eyes of a serpent blood-fed,

And with manifold troops in his train and with manifold ships hath he sped—

Yea, sped with his Syrian cars: he leads on the lords of the bow

To meet with the men of the West, the spear-armed force of the foe!

Can any make head and resist him, when he comes with the roll of a wave?

No barrier nor phalanx of might, no chief, be he ever so brave!

For stern is the onset of Persia, and gallant her children in fight.

But the guile of the god is deceitful, and who shall elude him by flight?

And who is the lord of the leap, that can spring and alight and evade?

For Até deludes and allures, till round him the meshes are laid,

And no man his doom can escape! it was writ in the rule of high Heaven,

That in tramp of the steeds and in crash of the charge the war-cry of Persia be given:

They have learned to behold the forbidden, the sacred enclosure of sea,

Where the waters are wide and in stress of the wind the billows roll hoary to lee!