Page:Four Plays of Aeschylus (Cookson).djvu/203

Rh

I know not

How fitly to refuse; and at your wish

All ye desire to know I will in plain,

Round terms set forth. And yet the telling of it

Harrows my soul; this winter's tale of wrong,

Of angry Gods and brute deformity,

And how and why on me these horrors swooped.

Always there were dreams visiting by night

The woman's chambers where I slept; and they

With flattering words admonished and cajoled me,

Saying, 'O lucky one, so long a maid?

And what a match for thee if thou would'st wed!

Why, pretty, here is Zeus as hot as hot—

Love-sick—to have thee! Such a bolt as thou

Hast shot clean through his heart! And he won't rest

Till Cypris help him win thee! Lift not then,

My daughter, a proud foot to spurn the bed

Of Zeus: but get thee gone to meadow deep

By Lerna's marsh, where are thy father's flocks

And cattle-folds, that on the eye of Zeus

May fall the balm that shall assuage desire.'

Such dreams oppressed me, troubling all my nights,

Woe's me! till I plucked courage up to tell

My father of these fears that walked in darkness.

And many times to Pytho and Dodona

He sent his sacred missioners, to inquire

How, or by deed or word, he might conform

To the high will and pleasure of the Gods.

And they returned with slippery oracles,

Nought plain, but all to baffle and perplex—