Erechtheus | Page 6

witness; nor
thine ear
Shall now my tongue invoke not, thou to me
Most hateful
of things holy, mournfullest 430 Of all old sacred streams that wash the
world,
Ilissus, on whose marge at flowery play
A whirlwind-footed
bridegroom found my child
And rapt her northward where mine
elder-born
Keeps now the Thracian bride-bed of a God
Intolerable
to seamen, but this land
Finds him in hope for her sake favourable,

A gracious son by wedlock; hear me then
Thou likewise, if with no
faint heart or false
The word I say be said, the gift be given, 440
Which might I choose I had rather die than give
Or speak and die not.
Ere thy limbs were made
Or thine eyes lightened, strife, thou knowest,
my child, 'Twixt God and God had risen, which heavenlier name

Should here stand hallowed, whose more liberal grace
Should win
this city's worship, and our land
To which of these do reverence; first
the lord
Whose wheels make lightnings of the foam-flowered sea

Here on this rock, whose height brow-bound with dawn
Is head and
heart of Athens, one sheer blow 450 Struck, and beneath the triple
wound that shook
The stony sinews and stark roots of the earth

Sprang toward the sun a sharp salt fount, and sank
Where lying it

lights the heart up of the hill,
A well of bright strange brine; but she
that reared
Thy father with her same chaste fostering hand
Set for a
sign against it in our guard
The holy bloom of the olive, whose hoar
leaf
High in the shadowy shrine of Pandrosus
Hath honour of us all;
and of this strife 460 The twelve most high Gods judging with one
mouth
Acclaimed her victress; wroth whereat, as wronged
That she
should hold from him such prize and place,
The strong king of the
tempest-rifted sea
Loosed reinless on the low Thriasian plain
The
thunders of his chariots, swallowing stunned
Earth, beasts, and men,
the whole blind foundering world That was the sun's at morning, and
ere noon
Death's; nor this only prey fulfilled his mind;
For with
strange crook-toothed prows of Carian folk 470 Who snatch a sanguine
life out of the sea,
Thieves keen to pluck their bloody fruit of spoil

From the grey fruitless waters, has their God
Furrowed our shores to
waste them, as the fields
Were landward harried from the north with
swords
Aonian, sickles of man-slaughtering edge
Ground for no
hopeful harvest of live grain
Against us in Boeotia; these being spent,

Now this third time his wind of wrath has blown
Right on this
people a mightier wave of war, 480 Three times more huge a ruin; such
its ridge
Foam-rimmed and hollow like the womb of heaven,
But
black for shining, and with death for life
Big now to birth and ripe
with child, full-blown
With fear and fruit of havoc, takes the sun

Out of our eyes, darkening the day, and blinds
The fair sky's face
unseasonably with change,
A cloud in one and billow of battle, a
surge
High reared as heaven with monstrous surf of spears
That
shake on us their shadow, till men's heads 490 Bend, and their hearts
even with its forward wind
Wither, so blasts all seed in them of hope

Its breath and blight of presage; yea, even now
The winter of this
wind out of the deeps
Makes cold our trust in comfort of the Gods

And blind our eye toward outlook; yet not here,

Here never shall the
Thracian plant on high
For ours his father's symbol, nor with wreaths

A strange folk wreathe it upright set and crowned
Here where our
natural people born behold 500 The golden Gorgon of the shield's

defence
That screens their flowering olive, nor strange Gods
Be
graced, and Pallas here have praise no more.
And if this be not I must
give my child,
Thee, mine own very blood and spirit of mine,
Thee
to be slain. Turn from me, turn thine eyes
A little from me; I can bear
not yet
To see if still they smile on mine or no,
If fear make faint
the light in them, or faith
Fix them as stars of safety. Need have we,
510 Sore need of stars that set not in mid storm,
Lights that outlast
the lightnings; yet my heart
Endures not to make proof of thine or
these,
Not yet to know thee whom I made, and bare
What manner
of woman; had I borne thee man,
I had made no question of thine
eyes or heart,
Nor spared to read the scriptures in them writ,
Wert
thou my son; yet couldst thou then but die
Fallen in sheer fight by
chance and charge of spears
And have no more of memory, fill no
tomb 520 More famous than thy fellows in fair field,
Where many
share the grave, many the praise;
But one crown shall one only girl
my child
Wear, dead for this dear city, and give back life
To him
that gave her and to me that bare,
And save two sisters living; and all
this,
Is this not all good? I shall give thee, child,
Thee but by fleshly
nature mine, to bleed
For dear land's love; but if the city fall
What
part is left me