Page:The poetical works of Matthew Arnold, 1897.djvu/344

306 Ranks any man with murder such an act?

With grievous deeds, perhaps; with murder, no!

Find then such cause, the charge of murder falls—

Be judge thyself if it abound not here.

All know how weak the eagle, Heracles,

Soaring from his death-pile on Œta, left

His puny, callow eaglets; and what trials—

Infirm protectors, dubious oracles

Construed awry, misplann'd invasions—wore

Three generations of his offspring out;

Hardly the fourth, with grievous loss, regain'd

Their fathers' realm, this isle, from Pelops named.

Who made that triumph, though deferr'd, secure?

Who, but the kinsmen of the royal brood

Of Heracles, scarce Heracleidæ less

Than they? these, and the Dorian lords, whose king

Ægimius gave our outcast house a home

When Thebes, when Athens dared not; who in arms

Thrice issued with us from their pastoral vales,

And shed their blood like water in our cause?

Such were the dispossessors; of what stamp

Were they we dispossessed?—of us I speak,

Who to Messenia with thy husband came;

I speak not now of Argos, where his brother,

Not now of Sparta, where his nephews reign'd.—

What we found here were tribes of fame obscure,

Much turbulence, and little constancy,

Precariously ruled by foreign lords

From the Æolian stock of Neleus sprung,

A house once great, now dwindling in its sons.

Such were the conquer'd, such the conquerors; who

Had most thy husband's confidence? Consult

His acts! the wife he chose was—full of virtues—

But an Arcadian princess, more akin