Page:The poetical works of Matthew Arnold, 1897.djvu/416

378 The anxious mother of an exiled son.

Thine enemy is slain, thy son is king!

Rejoice with us! and trust me, he who wish'd

Welfare to the Messenian state, and calm,

Could find no way to found them sure as this.

ÆPYTUS.

Mother, all these approve me; but if thou

Approve not too, I have but half my joy.

MEROPE.

O Æpytus, my son, behold, behold

This iron man, my enemy and thine,

This politic sovereign, lying at our feet,

With blood-bespatter'd robes, and chaplet shorn!

Inscrutable as ever, see, it keeps

Its sombre aspect of majestic care,

Of solitary thought, unshared resolve,

Even in death, that countenance austere!

So look'd he, when to Stenyclaros first,

A new-made wife, I from Arcadia came,

And found him at my husband's side, his friend,

His kinsman, his right hand in peace and war,

Unsparing in his service of his toil,

His blood—to me, for I confess it, kind;

So look'd he in that dreadful day of death;

So, when he pleaded for our league but now.

What meantest thou, O Polyphontes, what

Desired'st thou, what truly spurr'd thee on?

Was policy of state, the ascendency

Of the Heracleidan conquerors, as thou said'st,

Indeed thy lifelong passion and sole aim?

Or didst thou but, as cautious schemers use,