Page:Four Plays of Aeschylus (Cookson).djvu/199

Rh Fasting and faint he drives me on before,

With spectral hand,

Along the windings of the wasteful shore,

The salt sea-sand!

List! List! the pipe! how drowzily it shrills!

A cricket-cry!

See! See! the wax-webbed reeds! Oh, to these ills

Ye Gods on high,

Ye blessed Gods, what bourne? O wandering feet

When will ye rest?

O Cronian child, wherein by aught unmeet

Have I transgressed

To be yoke-fellow with Calamity?

My mind unstrung,

A crack-brained lack-wit, frantic mad am I,

By gad-fly stung,

Thy scourge, that tarres me on with buzzing wing!

Plunge me in fire,—

Hide me in earth,—to deep-sea-monsters fling,—

But my desire—

Kneeling I pray—grudge not to grant, O King!

Too long a race

Stripped for the course have I run to and fro;

And still I chase

The vanishing goal, the end of all my woe;

Enough have I mourned!

Hear'st thou the lowing of the maid cow-horned?

How should I hear thee not? Thou art the child

Of Inachus, dazed with the dizzying fly.

The heart of Zeus thou hast made hot with love