Page:Four Plays of Aeschylus (Cookson).djvu/204

192 And then at last to Inachus there raught

A saying that flashed clear; the drift, that I

Must be put out from home and country, forced

To be a wanderer at the ends of the earth,

A thing devote and dedicate; and if

I would not, there should fall a thunderbolt

From Zeus, with blinding flash, and utterly

Destroy my race. So spake the oracle

Of Loxias. In sorrow he obeyed,

And from beneath his roof drove forth his child

Grieving as he grieved, and from house and home

Bolted and barred me out. But the high hand

Of Zeus bear hardly on the rein of fate.

And, instantly—even in a moment—mind

And body suffered strange distortion. Horned

Even as ye see me now, and with sharp bite

Of gadfly pricked, with high-flung skip, stark-mad,

I bounded, galloping headlong on, until

I came to the sweet waters of the stream

Kerchneian, hard by Lerna's spring. And thither

Argus, the giant herdsman, fierce and fell

As a strong wine unmixed, with hateful cast

Of all his cunning eyes upon the trail,

Gave chase and tracked me down. And there he perished

By violent and sudden doom surprised.

But I with darting sting—the scorpion whip

Of angry Gods—am lashed from land to land.

Thou hast my story, and, if thou can'st tell

What I have still to suffer, speak; but do not

Moved by compassion with a lying tale

Warm my cold heart; no sickness of the soul

Is half so shameful as composed falsehoods.