Page:Four Plays of Aeschylus (Cookson).djvu/42

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With thy loathing visit them;

Plunge 'neath an empurpled sea

That embodied infamy

Pitched without and black within

With havoc and the purposed sin.

But the woman's cause espouse:

Think upon our storied house,

Tenderly the tale renewing

Of old love and eager wooing:

And our ancestress to be,

Woman, yet once dear to thee.

Ah, remember Long Ago,

Thou Comforter of Io's woe!

For we boast that we can trace

High as Zeus our ancient race:

Sojourners were we at birth;

This is home, this parent earth.

In the print flower-sweet

Of my mother's feet,

Behold, I have planted mine:

Where she stooped to feed

Knee-deep in the mead

That fattens the Argive kine:

And with her alway

To haunt and betray

The eye of the earthborn herd.

Far hence lies her road,

By the gadfly goad,

As a skiff with the oar-blade, spurred

She must know the pain

Of a maddened brain