Page:The Dramas of Aeschylus (Swanwick).djvu/450

380 Repeat thy questions and be taught in full;

For leisure have I, more than I desire.

If aught untold of her sore-wasting course

Remains by thee to be unfolded, speak.

But if thou hast told all, to us vouchsafe

The boon we craved; its scope full well thou knowest.

She of her roaming hath the limit heard,

That she not vainly to have heard may know,

Her woes ere coming here I will relate,

Sure pledge thus giving that my tale is true.

Tedious array of words I shall omit,

And of thy roamings reach at once the goal;

For when Molossia's plains thy foot had trod,

Round lofty-ridged Dodona, where is found

The seat prophetic of Thesprotian Zeus,

And, portent past belief, the speaking oaks,

By which thou clearly, in no riddling phrase,

Wert hailed as the illustrious spouse of Zeus,

Fate-destined,—if this flatter thee at all,—

Thence, fiercely stung, along the sea-washed tract,

To Rhea's mighty gulf didst hurry,—whence

In courses retrograde wert rudely tossed.

And through all future time know certainly

That sea-gulf shall the name Ionian bear,

To all mankind memorial of thy way;

These then to thee be tokens of my mind,

That more discerneth than doth moot the sense.