Page:Four Plays of Aeschylus (Cookson).djvu/55

Rh For when the sun departeth, night breeds care

For a good seaman; troops cannot be landed

With safety till a ship be snugly berthed.

Then with a quiet mind be vigilant

And ever mindful of the Gods, that so

Ye make their succour certain. For the state,

They shall not need to chide your messenger

Because he's old. For with the spirit of youth

Here in my heart it needs must prompt my tongue.

[Exit.

Ho! Land of hills—

Protectress, held in awe

Of old—now by new bonds of treaty-law

Knit to our hearts—what ills

Must we yet suffer at the hands of men?

Where shall we find a refuge, holy one?

In all this Apian earth is there no glen,

No haunt of darkness hollowed from the sun,

Where we may hide?

I would I were black smoke; a vapour dun

Drawn upwards to the clouds of Zeus' bright day.

Or might I vanish quite away,

Soaring where none should see me; none

Follow: lost in the wide

Of heaven, like dust that needs no wing

To waft it in aerial vanishing.

No refuge left:

No shelter from the slow

Insistent on-fall of unshunnable woe.

As waters in a cleft