Erechtheus | Page 3

the bright songs break.
Help, earth, help, heaven, that hear [_Ant._ 3. The song-notes of our
fear,
Shrewd notes and shrill, not clear or joyful-sounding;
Hear, highest of Gods, and stay
Death on his hunter's way,
Full on
his forceless prey his beagles hounding;
Break thou his bow, make short his hand,
Maim his fleet foot whose
passage kills the living land. 190 Let a third wave smite not us, father,

[_Str._ 4. Long since sore smitten of twain,
Lest the house of thy
son's son perish
And his name be barren on earth.
Whose race wilt
thou comfort rather
If none to thy son remain?
Whose seed wilt
thou choose to cherish
If his be cut off in the birth?
For the first fair graft of his graffing
[_Ant._ 4.
Was rent from its maiden root
200
By the strong swift hand of a lover
Who fills the night with his breath;
On the lip of the stream low-laughing
Her green soft virginal shoot

Was plucked from the stream-side cover
By the grasp of a love like death.
For a God's was the mouth that kissed her
[_Str._ 5.
Who speaks, and the leaves lie dead,
When winter awakes as at
warning
To the sound of his foot from Thrace. 210 Nor happier the
bed of her sister
Though Love's self laid her abed
By a bridegroom
beloved of the morning
And fair as the dawn's own face.
For Procris, ensnared and ensnaring
[_Ant._ 5.
By the fraud of a twofold wile,
With the point of her own spear
stricken
By the gift of her own hand fell.
Oversubtle in doubts,
overdaring
In deeds and devices of guile, 220 And strong to quench
as to quicken,
O Love, have we named thee well?
By thee was the spear's edge whetted
[_Str._ 6.
That laid her dead in the dew,
In the moist green glens of the midland

By her dear lord slain and thee.
And him at the cliff's end fretted

By the grey keen waves, him too,
Thine hand from the white-browed
headland

Flung down for a spoil to the sea.
230
But enough now of griefs grey-growing
[_Ant._ 6.
Have darkened the house divine,
Have flowered on its boughs and
faded,
And green is the brave stock yet.
O father all-seeing and
all-knowing,
Let the last fruit fall not of thine
From the tree with
whose boughs we are shaded,
From the stock that thy son's hand set.
ERECHTHEUS.
O daughter of Cephisus, from all time
Wise have I found thee, wife
and queen, of heart 240 Perfect; nor in the days that knew not wind

Nor days when storm blew death upon our peace
Was thine heart
swoln with seed of pride, or bowed
With blasts of bitter fear that
break men's souls
Who lift too high their minds toward heaven, in
thought Too godlike grown for worship; but of mood
Equal, in good
time reverent of time bad,
And glad in ill days of the good that were.

Nor now too would I fear thee, now misdoubt
Lest fate should find
thee lesser than thy doom, 250 Chosen if