Page:Tragedies of Seneca (1907) Miller.djvu/450

432 Have been unmindful, and his child At the hest of cringing fear betrayed. Not so of old: then Rome could boast Of manly virtue, martial blood. There lived a race of heroes then Who curbed the power of haughty kings And drove them forth from Rome; and thee, O maiden, slain by thy father's hand, Lest thou shouldst in slavery's bonds be held, And lest foul lust its victorious will Should work on thee, did well avenge. Thee, too, a bloody war avenged, O chaste Lucretia; for thou, By the lust of an impious tyrant stained, With wretched hand didst seek to cleanse Those stains by thy innocent blood. Then Tullia with her guilty lord, Base Tarquin, dared an impious deed, Whose penalty they paid; for she Over the limbs of her murdered sire, A heartless child, drove cruel wheels, And left his corpse unburied there. Such deeds of dire impiety Our age has known, our eyes have seen, When the prince on the mighty Tyrrhene deep In a fatal bark his mother sent, By guile ensnared. The sailors at his bidding haste To leave the peaceful harbor's arms; And soon the rougher waves resound Beneath their oars, and far away Upon the deep the vessel glides; When suddenly the reeling bark With loosened beams yawns open wide, And drinks the briny sea. A mighty shout to heaven goes, With women's lamentations filled, And death stalks dire before the eyes