Erechtheus

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Title: Erechtheus
A Tragedy (New Edition)
Author: Algernon Charles Swinburne
Release Date: June 11, 2006 [EBook #18550]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
0. START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK
ERECHTHEUS ***
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ERECHTHEUS:
A TRAGEDY.
BY
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
[Greek: ô tai liparai kai iostephanoi kai aoidimoi,
Hellados ereisma,
kleinai Athanai, daimonion ptoliethron.]

PIND. _Fr._ 47.
[Greek: AT. tis de poimanôr epesti kapidespozei stratou?
XO. outinos douloi keklê, tai phôtos oud' upêkooi.]
ÆSCH. _Pers._ 241-2.
_A NEW EDITION._
London:
CHATTO AND WINDUS, PICCADILLY.
1881.
PERSONS.
ERECHTHEUS.
CHORUS OF ATHENIAN ELDERS.

PRAXITHEA.
CHTHONIA.
HERALD OF EUMOLPUS.

MESSENGER.
ATHENIAN HERALD.
ATHENA.
ERECHTHEUS.
ERECHTHEUS.
Mother of life and death and all men's days,
Earth, whom I chief of
all men born would bless,
And call thee with more loving lips than
theirs
Mother, for of this very body of thine
And living blood I have
my breath and live,
Behold me, even thy son, me crowned of men,

Me made thy child by that strong cunning God
Who fashions fire and
iron, who begat
Me for a sword and beacon-fire on thee,
Me
fosterling of Pallas, in her shade 10 Reared, that I first might pay the
nursing debt,
Hallowing her fame with flower of third-year feasts,

And first bow down the bridled strength of steeds
To lose the wild
wont of their birth, and bear
Clasp of man's knees and steerage of his
hand,
Or fourfold service of his fire-swift wheels
That whirl the
four-yoked chariot; me the king
Who stand before thee naked now,
and cry,
O holy and general mother of all men born,
But mother
most and motherliest of mine, 20 Earth, for I ask thee rather of all the

Gods,
What have we done? what word mistimed or work
Hath
winged the wild feet of this timeless curse
To fall as fire upon us? Lo,
I stand
Here on this brow's crown of the city's head
That crowns its
lovely body, till death's hour
Waste it; but now the dew of dawn and
birth
Is fresh upon it from thy womb, and we
Behold it born how
beauteous; one day more
I see the world's wheel of the circling sun
30 Roll up rejoicing to regard on earth
This one thing goodliest, fair
as heaven or he,
Worth a God's gaze or strife of Gods; but now

Would this day's ebb of their spent wave of strife
Sweep it to sea,
wash it on wreck, and leave
A costless thing contemned; and in our
stead,
Where these walls were and sounding streets of men,
Make
wide a waste for tongueless water-herds
And spoil of ravening fishes;
that no more
Should men say, Here was Athens. This shalt thou 40
Sustain not, nor thy son endure to see,
Nor thou to live and look on;
for the womb
Bare me not base that bare me miserable,
To hear this
loud brood of the Thracian foam
Break its broad strength of
billowy-beating war
Here, and upon it as a blast of death
Blowing,
the keen wrath of a fire-souled king,
A strange growth grafted on our
natural soil,
A root of Thrace in Eleusinian earth
Set for no comfort
to the kindly land, 50 Son of the sea's lord and our first-born foe,

Eumolpus; nothing sweet in ears of thine
The music of his making,
nor a song
Toward hopes of ours auspicious; for the note
Rings as
for death oracular to thy sons
That goes before him on the sea-wind
blown
Full of this charge laid on me, to put out
The brief light
kindled of mine own child's life,
Or with this helmsman hand that
steers the state
Run right on the under shoal and ridge of death 60
The populous ship with all its fraughtage gone
And sails that were to
take the wind of time

Rent, and the tackling that should hold out fast

In confluent surge of loud calamities
Broken, with spars of rudders
and lost oars
That were to row toward harbour and find rest
In some
most glorious haven of all the world
And else may never near it: such
a song
The Gods have set his lips on fire withal
Who threatens now
in all their names to bring 70 Ruin; but none of these, thou knowest,

have I
Chid with my tongue or cursed at heart for grief,
Knowing
how the soul runs reinless on sheer death
Whose grief or joy takes
part against the Gods.
And what they will is more than our desire,

And their desire is more than what we will.
For no man's will and no
desire of man's
Shall stand as doth a God's will. Yet, O fair
Mother,
that seest me how I cast no word
Against them, plead no reason,
crave no cause, 80 Boast me not blameless, nor beweep