Erechtheus | Page 7

in my children then? 530 But if it stand and thou for it lie
dead,
Then hast thou in it a better part than we,
A holier portion
than we all; for each
Hath but the length of his own life to live,
And
this most glorious mother-land on earth
To worship till that life have
end; but thine
Hath end no more than hers; thou, dead, shalt live

Till Athens live not; for the days and nights
Given of thy bare brief
dark dividual life,
Shall she give thee half all her agelong own 540
And all its glory; for thou givest her these;
But with one hand she
takes and gives again

More than I gave or she requires of thee.

Come therefore, I will make thee fit for death,
I that could give thee,
dear, no gift at birth
Save of light life that breathes and bleeds, even I

Will help thee to this better gift than mine
And lead thee by this
little living hand
That death shall make so strong, to that great end

Whence it shall lighten like a God's, and strike 550 Dead the strong

heart of battle that would break
Athens; but ye, pray for this land, old
men,
That it may bring forth never child on earth
To love it less, for
none may more, than we.
CHORUS.
Out of the north wind grief came forth, [_Str._ 1. And the shining of a
sword out of the sea.
Yea, of old the first-blown blast blew the
prelude of this last, The blast of his trumpet upon Rhodope.
Out of
the north skies full of his cloud,
With the clamour of his storms as of
a crowd 560 At the wheels of a great king crying aloud,
At the axle of
a strong king's car
That has girded on the girdle of war--
With
hands that lightened the skies in sunder
And feet whose fall was
followed of thunder,
A God, a great God strange of name,
With
horse-yoke fleeter-hoofed than flame,
To the mountain bed of a
maiden came,
Oreithyia, the bride mismated,
Wofully wed in a
snow-strewn bed 570 With a bridegroom that kisses the bride's mouth
dead; Without garland, without glory, without song,
As a fawn by
night on the hills belated,
Given over for a spoil unto the strong.

From lips how pale so keen a wail [_Ant._ 1. At the grasp of a God's
hand on her she gave,
When his breath that darkens air made a havoc
of her hair, It rang from the mountain even to the wave;
Rang with a
cry, _Woe's me, woe is me!_
From the darkness upon Hæmus to the
sea: 580 And with hands that clung to her new lord's knee,
As a
virgin overborne with shame,
She besought him by her spouseless
fame,
By the blameless breasts of a maid unmarried
And locks
unmaidenly rent and harried,
And all her flower of body, born
To
match the maidenhood of morn,
With the might of the wind's wrath
wrenched and torn. Vain, all vain as a dead man's vision
Falling by
night in his old friends' sight, 590 To be scattered with slumber and
slain ere light;
Such a breath of such a bridegroom in that hour
Of
her prayers made mock, of her fears derision,
And a ravage of her
youth as of a flower.
With a leap of his limbs as a lion's, a cry from
his lips as

of thunder, [_Str._ 2. In a storm of amorous godhead filled with fire,

From the height of the heaven that was rent with the roar of his
coming in sunder,
Sprang the strong God on the spoil of his desire.

And the pines of the hills were as green reeds shattered, And their
branches as buds of the soft spring scattered, 600 And the west wind
and east, and the sound of the south, Fell dumb at the blast of the north
wind's mouth,
At the cry of his coming out of heaven.
And the wild
beasts quailed in the rifts and hollows
Where hound nor clarion of
huntsman follows,
And the depths of the sea were aghast, and
whitened,
And the crowns of their waves were as flame that lightened,
And the heart of the floods thereof was riven.
But she knew not him
coming for terror, she felt not her wrong
that he wrought her, [_Ant._ 2. When her locks as leaves were shed
before his breath, 610 And she heard not for terror his prayer, though
the cry was a
God's that besought her,
Blown from lips that strew the world-wide
seas with death. For the heart was molten within her to hear,
And her
knees beneath her were loosened for fear,
And her blood fast bound
as a frost-bound water,
And the soft new bloom of the green earth's
daughter
Wind-wasted as blossom of a tree;
As the wild God rapt
her from earth's breast lifted,
On the strength of the stream of his dark
breath drifted, From the bosom of earth as a bride from the mother, 620
With storm for bridesman and wreck for brother,
As a cloud that he
sheds upon the