Page:The Dramas of Aeschylus (Swanwick).djvu/374

304 Who to the twain allotteth so much ground

To dwell on as they hold when slain,

Stript of all portion in their wide domain.

But when in death they lie,

Spear-mangled, each by other slain;—

When drinks their native dust the gory rain.

Who then with lustral rites may purify?

Who cleanse them from that stain?

O horrors new upon this house that wait,

Blent with the direful ills of earlier date!

For of the crime I tell

On which of old swift vengeance fell,

Yet whose dread issue the third age doth wait;

When Laios, 'gainst Apollo's will divine,

From Pythia's central shrine

Who thrice proclaimed the sacred oracle,

"Die without issue wouldst thou save the State,—"

Yet he, by friends o'erpower'd, perverse of mind,

Begat his proper woe

In Œdipus, the parricide, who dared,

In field unhallow'd whence he sprang, to sow

A bloody offshoot. Frenzy blind

In wedlock the infatuate couple paired.

And now a sea of ill leads wave on wave;—