Page:Suppliant Maidens (Morshead) 1883.djvu/15



! Lord and guard of suppliant hands!

Look down benign on us who crave

Thine aid—whom winds and waters drave

From where, through drifting shifting sands,

Pours Nilus to the wave.

From where the green land, god-possest,

Closes and fronts the Syrian waste,

We flee as exiles, yet unbanned

By murder's sentence from our land;

But—since Ægyptus had decreed

His sons should wed his brother's seed,—

Ourselves we tore from bonds abhorred

From wedlock not of heart but hand,

Nor brooked to call a kinsman lord!

And Danaus, our sire and guide,

The king of counsel, pond'ring well

The dice of fortune as they fell,

Out of two griefs the kindlier chose,

And bade us fly, with him beside,