Page:Four Plays of Aeschylus (Cookson).djvu/164

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How shall we praise them? Shall we say

Their own should love them well,

Seeing they wrought much in their day,

Were wondrous hospitable?

When host met host, the pledge was graced

They lavished all—in laying waste!

O crown of women, woe-begone!

Of mothers, most unblest!

Who took to husband her own son,

And suckled at her breast

Babes, that in mutual slaughter bleed:

Here ends that sowing—and the seed!

Yea, in their seed-time they were twinned,

And clove in twain by hate

They are clean gone—a stormy wind

Hath swept them to their fate:

Such peace-making these brawlers have,

And their conclusion is the grave.

There they forget to hate: their strife

Springs to no fierce rebirth:

The sundered rivers of their life

Mingle in peaceful earth;

And in that dark, distempered clay

Too near, too near in blood are they.

Alack! The alien of the sea,

Keen iron, fire's own child,

With bitter blows, unlovingly

Their quarrel reconciled;

Ares hath sharp division made;

He heard the prayer their father prayed.