Page:Four Plays of Aeschylus (Cookson).djvu/15

Rh Youngling divine, I hail thee now,

From beyond the sea thine aid I invoke;

Son flower-fed of the Mother Cow,

Quick with Zeus' breath and his handstroke.

So of the dam with hoof and horn

And enchanted body a babe was born,

Man-child made for mortal lot,

Epaphus, the touch-begot.

The naming of thee where long ago

Our Mother roamed this pastoral earth,

And the calling to mind of a vanished woe

Shall bear witness in trials of later birth;

And more sorrow yet may come into ken,

Though we know not how and we guess not when,

Like ours of to-day and hers of old;

And these at long last shall Time unfold.

To one that watcheth the wild birds winging,

Here at ease in his native bower,

The suppliant song of an alien race

Chance-heard, shall seem as the sweet, sad singing

Of Tereus' Daulian paramour,

The nightingale hidden, the hawk in chase.

Spring and summer for sorrow she grieveth

Under the green leaves weeping her pain

And the life that was passed in homelessness:

Spring and summer the story she weaveth

Of the child .she bore by her own hand slain,

And the wrath of a mother pitiless.