Page:The poetical works of Matthew Arnold, 1897.djvu/396

358 MEROPE.

Thou wilt destroy, I see, thyself and us.

ÆPYTUS.

O suffering! O calamity! how ten,

How twentyfold worse are ye, when your blows

Not only wound the sense, but kill the soul,

The noble thought, which is alone the man!

That I, to-day returning, find myself

Orphan'd of both my parents—by his foes

My father, by your strokes my mother slain!

For this is not my mother, who dissuades,

At the dread altar of her husband's tomb,

His son from vengeance on his murderer;

And not alone dissuades him, but compares

His just revenge to an unnatural deed,

A deed so awful, that the general tongue

Fluent of horrors, falters to relate it—

Of darkness so tremendous, that its author,

Though to his act empower'd, nay, impell'd,

By the oracular sentence of the Gods,

Fled, for years after, o'er the face of earth,

A frenzied wanderer, a God-driven man,

And hardly yet, some say, hath found a grave—

With such a deed as this thou matchest mine,

Which Nature sanctions, which the innocent blood

Clamors to find fulfill'd, which good men praise,

And only bad men joy to see undone!

O honor'd father! hide thee in thy grave

Deep as thou canst, for hence no succor comes;

Since from thy faithful subjects what revenge

Canst thou expect, when thus thy widow fails?

Alas! an adamantine strength indeed,