Page:Four Plays of Aeschylus (Cookson).djvu/221

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Patience! patience! thou rash fool!

Have so much patience as to school thy mind

To a right judgment in thy present troubles.

Lo, I am rockfast, and thy words are waves

That weary me in vain. Let not the thought

Enter thy mind, that I in awe of Zeus

Shall change my nature for a girl's, or beg

The Loathed beyond all loathing—with my hands

Spread out in woman's fashion—to cast loose

These bonds; from that I am utterly removed.

I have talked much, yet further not my purpose;

For thou art in no whit melted or moved

By my prolonged entreaties: like a colt

New to the harness thou dost back and plunge,

Snap at thy bit and fight against the rein.

And yet thy confidence is in a straw;

For stubborness, if one be in the wrong,

Is in itself weaker than naught at all.

See now, if thou wilt not obey my words,

What storm, what triple-crested wave of woe

Unshunnable shall come upon thee. First,

This rocky chasm shall the Father split

With earthquake thunder and his burning bolt,

And he shall hide thy form, and thou shalt hang

Bolt upright, dandled in the rock's rude arms.

Nor till thou hast completed thy long term

Shalt thou come back into the light; and then

The winged hound of Zeus, the tawny eagle,

Shall violently fall upon thy flesh

And rend it as 'twere rags; and every day