Page:Four Plays of Aeschylus (Cookson).djvu/214

202 The lion's whelp, the archer bold, whose bow

Shall set me free. This is the oracle

Themis, my ancient Mother, Titan-born,

Disclosed to me; but how and in what wise

Were long to tell, nor would it profit thee.

Again they come, again

The fury and the pain!

The gangrened wound! The ache of pulses dinned

With raging throes!

It beats upon my brain—the burning wind

That madness blows!

It pricks—the barb, the hook not forged with heat,

The gadfly dart!

Against my ribs with thud of trampling feet

Hammers my heart!

And like a bowling wheel mine eyeballs spin,

And I am flung

By fierce winds from my course, nor can rein in

My frantic tongue

That raves I know not what!—a random tide

Of words—a froth

Of muddied waters buffeting the wide,

High-crested, hateful wave of ruin and God's wrath!

[Exit raving.

I hold him wise who first in his own mind

This canon fixed and taught it to mankind:—

True marriage is the union that mates

Equal with equal; not where wealth emasculates,

Or mighty lineage is magnified,

Should he who earns his bread look for a bride.