Page:The poetical works of Matthew Arnold, 1897.djvu/398

360 Sometimes, when he was gone, I wish'd him back,

Risk what he might; now that I have him here,

Now that I feed mine eyes on that young face,

Hear that fresh voice, and clasp that gold-lock'd head,

I shudder, Laias, to commit my child

To murder's dread arena, where I saw

His father and his ill-starr'd brethren fall!

I loathe for him the slippery way of blood;

I ask if bloodless means may gain his end.

In me the fever of revengeful hate,

Passion's first furious longing to imbrue

Our own right hand in the detested blood

Of enemies, and count their dying groans—

If in this feeble bosom such a fire

Did ever burn—is long by time allay'd,

And I would now have Justice strike, not me.

Besides—for from my brother and my son

I hide not even this—the reverence deep,

Remorseful, tow'rd my hostile solitude,

By Polyphontes never fail'd-in once

Through twenty years; his mournful anxious zeal

To efface in me the memory of his crime—

Though it efface not that, yet makes me wish

His death a public, not a personal act,

Treacherously plotted 'twixt my son and me;

To whom this day he came to proffer peace,

Treaty, and to this kingdom for my son

Heirship, with fair intent, as I believe.—

For that he plots thy death, account it false;

(To ÆPYTUS.)

Number it with the thousand rumors vain,

Figments of plots, wherewith intriguers fill

The enforced leisure of an exile's ear.