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Raise thou thine head at love's last, dearest call!

Yea, speed forth Right to aid thy kinsmen's cause;

Grip for grip, let them grasp the foe, if thou

Willest in triumph to forget thy fall.

Hear me, father, once again hear me.

Lo! on thy tomb, two fledglings of thy brood—

A man-child and a maid; hold them in ruth,

Nor wipe them out, the last of Pelops' line.

For while they live, thou livest from the dead—

Children are memory's voices, and preserve

The dead from wholly dying: as a net

Is ever by the buoyant corks upheld,

Which save the flax-mesh, in the depth submerged.

Listen, this wail of ours doth rise for thee,

And as thou heedest it thyself art saved.

In sooth, a blameless prayer ye spake at length—

The tomb's requital for its dirge denied:

Now, for the rest, as thou art fixed to do,

Take fortune by the hand and work thy will.

The doom is set; and yet I fain would ask—

Not swerving from the course of my resolve,—

Wherefore she sent these offerings, and why