Page:The Dramas of Aeschylus (Swanwick).djvu/358

288 In common ruin; maidens in their prime

Are with new sorrow filled; for they

Of haughty foemen now must own the sway,

Forceful their wretched couch who climb;

Their hope that death, their tear-fraught woes to end,

O'er them may soon her sheltering night extend.

The army-scout, to me it seemeth, friends,

Brings us some recent tiding from the host,

Plying in haste his charioteering feet.

And lo! our king, offspring of Œdipus,

Comes in fair time the herald's news to hear.

Unmeasured too his footsteps are through haste.

I, the foe's movements knowing, can report

How at the gates each hath his post by lot.

Tydeus already at the Proitid gates

Raves; but to cross Ismenos' ford the seer

Forbids, for inauspicious are the rites.

But Tydeus, frenzied, hankering for fight,

Blusters with yell like serpent's noonday hiss,

And at the skilful seer, Oïcles' son,

Aimeth the taunt that he, through cowardice,

Fawneth on death and battle. Shouting thus,

A triple shadowy plume, his helmet's mane,

He shakes, and underneath his hollow shield,