Page:Suppliant Maidens (Morshead) 1883.djvu/26

12 Foul is the bird that rends another bird,

And foul the men who hale unwilling maids,

From sire unwilling, to the bridal bed.

Never on earth, nor in the lower world,

Shall lewdness such as theirs escape the ban:

There too, if men say right, a God there is

Who upon dead men turns their sin to doom,

To final doom. Take heed, draw hitherward,

That from this hap your safety ye may win.

[Enter the.

Speak—of what land are ye? No Grecian band

Is this to whom I speak, with Eastern robes

And wrappings richly dight: no Argive maid,

No woman in all Greece such garb doth wear.

This too gives marvel, how unto this land,

Unheralded, unfriended, without guide,

And without fear, ye came? yet wands I see,

True sign of suppliance, by you laid down

On shrines of these our gods of festival.

No land but Greece can rede such signs aright.

Much else there is, conjecture well might guess,

But let words teach the man who stands to hear.

True is the word thou spakest of my garb;

But speak I unto thee as citizen,

Or Hermes' wandbearer, or chieftain king?