Page:Four Plays of Aeschylus (Cookson).djvu/74

62

Meseemeth none of mortal birth

That tide of men dare brave,

A sea that delugeth the earth,

A vast resistless wave.

No! Persia's matchless millions

No human power can quell,

Such native valour arms her sons,

Such might incomparable!

For Fate from immemorial age

Chose out her sons for power:

Bade them victorious war to wage

And breach the bastioned tower:

In chivalry to take delight

Where clashing squadrons close:

Kingdoms and polities the might

Of their strong arm o'erthrows.

They gaze on ocean lawns that leap

With bickering billows gray

Swept by fierce winds; their myriads sweep

Ocean's immense highway,

Where, leashed with cables fibre-fine,

Their buoyant galleys bridge

The rough waves of the sundering brine

From ridge to crested ridge.

And yet what man, of woman born,

Outwits the guile of God?

The pit He digs what foot may scorn,

Though with all lightness shod?

For ruin first with laughing face

Lures man into the net,

Whence never wight of mortal race

Leapt free and scatheless yet.