Page:The Dramas of Aeschylus (Swanwick).djvu/90

20 Full many sorrows rankle at the core.

Those whom he sent each holds in ken,

But to their homes return

Armour and in the funeral urn,

Ashes instead of men.

For Ares, bartering for gold

The flesh of men, the scales doth hold

In battle of the spear.

From Ilion, back to sorrowing friends,

Rich dust, fire-purified, he sends,

Wash'd with full many a tear.

No living warriors greet them, but instead

Urns filled with ashes smoothly spread.

Groaning, each hero's praise they tell;

How this excelled in martial strife;

And that in fields of carnage fell,

Right nobly for another's wife.

Breathing such murmurs, jealous hate

Doth on the Atridan champions wait.

Achaians, cast in fairest mould,

Ensépulchred 'neath Ilion's wall,

The foughten shore now firmly hold,

The hostile sod their pall.

Direful the people's voice, to hate

Attuned, which worketh soon or late

As ban of public doom.