Page:Four Plays of Aeschylus (Cookson).djvu/103

Rh And when man, shod with haste and girt with pride,

Beckons his own doom, God is on his side.

And now, methinks, to all men of good will

The fount lies bare whence flowed this broadening ill;

But the event my son too rashly wrought

In the blind arrogance of childish thought.

He dreamed that he could chain, as men chain slaves,

The holy haste of Hellespontine waves,

God's flowing Bosphorus; another measure

Presumed to teach its billows, at his pleasure

Bound them in linkéd fetters hammered fast,

Yea, made a high way, where his army passed.

A mortal man on all the Gods that be

He ventured war; the lordship of the sea,

Poseidon's realm (he judged so much amiss),

Challenged and thought to quell. And was not this

The very madness of a mind diseased?

Prosperity and power and wealth, which eased

The lives of men, my long reign's rich reward,

Is plunder now for some freebooter's sword!

All this impetuous Xerxes, over-ruled

By evil men, in their rash counsel schooled,

Learned; for they taught him that thy valour won

Great opulence and wide dominion

For thy succeeding heirs; and 'twas a taunt

Of theirs that he at home was valiant,

But with new wealth no wise increased thy store:

And so detraction oft-repeated bore

Ill fruit: to doom the readiest way he went

And against Hellas launched his armament.