Page:Four Plays of Aeschylus (Cookson).djvu/17

Rh The thing that he hath wrought

With brow-nod of calm thought

Fallen, stands fast, and, grappled, is not thrown.

His counsels tread the maze

Of labyrinthine ways

Through quicks, through glooms with umbrage overgrown;

And in that covert dark and shy

Bold riders check the rein, foiled is the keenest cry.

From towered bastions

Of Hope he plucks Time's sons

And tosses them to ruin. If one brace

The mettle weariless

Of Gods for his duress,

Pride pays with penal pangs, though throned in the holy place.

So let him mark afresh

How froward is this flesh,

How the polled trunk for lust of me doth grow

With many a stubborn shoot;

How pricks to mad pursuit

The unremitting goad, a curse, a cheat, a woe.

So to music impassioned,

Sung high, sung low,

With tears I have fashioned

Untuneable woe.

Alack! 'tis like mourner's grieving.