Page:Four Plays of Aeschylus (Cookson).djvu/152

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Be not, belovéd—child of Œdipus—

Like unto him out of whose mouth proceeds

All wickedness! Alas! It is enough

If our Cadmeans with these Argives fight:

There's water for that blood; but brother-murder

Is like the tettered slough that will not off:

'Tis spotted with the guilt that ne'er grows old!

If evil come, so it be free from shame,

Why let it come. All titles else save honour

Die when we die and sleep with us in the grave:

But if to evil thou add infamy

How shall men speak it fair and call it honest?

Child, what crav'st thou? Let not the battle-lust

Bloody with dripping spears thy ruin be!

Forth from thy soul the evil passion thrust

Or e'er it mount apace and master thee!

Since in this power that speeds the event I feel

The insupportable blast of God's own breath,

Blow, wind! Fill, sails! And where Cocytus' tide

Heaves dark, with gleams of Phoebus' fiery hate,

Down-wind let drift the last of Laius' line!

This is some fierce unnatural appetite

That hungers after flesh unseethed and raw!

Famished for human victims! The loathed rite

Whose fruit is sour, whose blood sins 'gainst the law!

It is my father's curse! I feel the glare

Of those hard eyes not moist with human tears!