Page:The Plays of Euripides Vol. 1- Edward P. Coleridge (1910).djvu/327

Rh and drag him from her house. 'Tis well to honour piety in the hour of fortune, but when thou wouldst harm thy foe, no law doth block thy path.

. Daughter of Demeter, goddess of highways, queen as thou art of haunting powers of darkness, oh! guide as well the hand that fills by day a cup of death, against those to whom my revered mistress is sending a philtre of the gore that dripped from hellish Gorgon's severed head, yea, 'gainst him who would obtrude upon the halls of the Erechthidæ. Never may alien, from alien stock, lord it o'er my city, no! none save noble Erechtheus' sons! For if this deadly deed and my lady's aims pass unfulfilled, and the right moment for her daring go by, and with it the hope which now sustains her, either will she seize the whetted knife or fasten the noose about her neck, and by ending one sorrow by another will go down to other phases of existence. For never will that daughter of a noble line, while life is hers, endure within the sunshine of her eyes the sight of alien rulers in her halls. I blush for that god of song, if this stranger is to witness the torch-dance, that heralds in the twentieth dawn, around Callichorus' fair springs, a sleepless votary in midnight revels, what time the star-lit firmament of Zeus, the moon, and Nereus' fifty daughters, that trip it lightly o'er the sea and the eternal rivers' tides, join the dance in honour of the maiden with the crown of gold and her majestic mother; where this vagabond, by Phœbus favoured, thinks to reign, entering into other men's hard toil. Look to it, all ye bards, who, in malicious strains, expose our amours and unholy bonds of lawless love; see how far our virtue surpasses man's