Page:The Dramas of Aeschylus (Swanwick).djvu/112

42 Whirleth on eddies of dark thought

My bodeful heart;

Yet, against hope, the gods I pray,

That, false to augury, my lay

Futile may fall, with vain foreboding fraught.

Never will perfect health confess

Her limit sated; though disease,

Neighbour, with party-wall, against her press.

Sailing with prosperous course elate,

Strikes on the hidden reef man's proud estate.

Then if reluctant Fear, with well-poised sling,

His bales doth into ocean fling,

Riseth once more the bark; and though

With evil freighted to the full,

Floateth secure the lightened hull.

So likewise, gift of ample worth

From Zeus, the year's increase,

Whose teeming harvests in the furrows grow,

Quells the disease of dearth.

But when on earth the crimson gore

Of man hath fallen, never more

May charm or spell the vanished life evoke;

Hence he of old, whose mystic lore

Was skilled the dead from Hades to restore,

Fell, blasted by the Thunderer's warning stroke.

Now did not Fate—a heaven-sent Fate—

Baffle my impulse, ere too late,