Chapter 2

Child of the chief of Gods, and maiden crowned, Queen of these towers and fostress of their king, Pallas, and thou my father's holiest head, A living well of life nor stanched nor stained, O God Cephisus, thee too charge I next, Be to me judge and 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 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 Haemus 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 sea.

Of this hoary-headed woe [_Epode._ Song made memory long ago; Now a younger grief to mourn Needs a new song younger born. Who shall teach our tongues to reach What strange height of saddest speech, For the new bride's sake that is given to be A stay to fetter the foot of the sea, 630 Lest it quite spurn down and trample the town, Ere the violets be dead that were plucked for its crown, Or its olive-leaf whiten and wither? Who shall say of the wind's way That he journeyed yesterday, Or the track of the storm that shall sound to-morrow, If the new be more than the grey-grown sorrow? For the wind of the green first season was keen, And the blast shall be sharper than blew between That the breath of the sea blows hither. 640

HERALD OF EUMOLPUS.

Old men, grey borderers on the march of death, Tongue-fighters, tough of talk and sinewy speech, Else nerveless, from no crew of such faint folk Whose tongues are stouter than their hands come I To bid not you to battle; let them strike Whose swords are sharper than your keen-tongued wail, And ye, sit fast and sorrow; but what man Of all this land-folk and earth-labouring herd For heart or hand seems foremost, him I call If heart be his to hearken, him bid forth 650 To try if one be in the sun's sight born Of all that grope and grovel on dry ground That may join hands in battle-grip for death With them whose seed and strength is of the sea.

CHORUS.

Know thou this much for all thy loud blast blown, We lack not hands to speak with, swords to plead, For proof of peril, not of boisterous breath, Sea-wind and storm of barren mouths that foam And rough rock's edge of menace; and short space May lesson thy large ignorance and inform 660 This insolence with knowledge if there live Men earth-begotten of no tenderer thews Than knit the great joints of the grim sea's brood With hasps of steel together; heaven to help, One man shall break, even on their own flood's verge, That iron bulk of battle; but thine eye That sees it now swell higher than sand or shore Haply shall see not when thine host shall shrink.

HERALD OF EUMOLPUS.

Not haply, nay, but surely, shall not thine.

CHORUS.

That lot shall no God give who fights for thee. 670

HERALD OF EUMOLPUS.

Shall Gods bear bit and bridle, fool, of men?

CHORUS.

Nor them forbid we nor shalt thou constrain.

HERALD OF EUMOLPUS.

Yet say'st thou none shall make the good lot mine?

CHORUS.

Of thy side none, nor moved for fear of thee.

HERALD OF EUMOLPUS.

Gods hast thou then to baffle Gods of ours?

CHORUS.

Nor thine nor mine, but equal-souled are they.

HERALD OF EUMOLPUS.

Toward good and ill, then, equal-eyed of soul?

CHORUS.

Nay, but swift-eyed to note where ill thoughts breed.

HERALD OF EUMOLPUS.

Thy shaft word-feathered flies yet far of me.

CHORUS.

Pride knows not, wounded, till the heart be cleft. 680

HERALD OF EUMOLPUS.

No shaft wounds deep whose wing is plumed with words.

CHORUS.

Lay that to heart, and bid thy tongue learn grace.

HERALD OF EUMOLPUS.

Grace shall thine own crave soon too late of mine.

CHORUS.

Boast thou till then, but I wage words no more.

ERECHTHEUS.

Man, what shrill wind of speech and wrangling air Blows in our ears a summons from thy lips Winged with what message, or what gift or grace Requiring? none but what his hand may take Here may the foe think hence to reap, nor this Except some doom from Godward yield it him. 690

HERALD OF EUMOLPUS.

King of this land-folk, by my mouth to thee Thus saith the son of him that shakes thine earth, Eumolpus; now the stakes of war are set, For land or sea to win by throw and wear; Choose therefore or to quit thy side and give The palm unfought for to his bloodless hand, Or by that father's sceptre, and the foot Whose tramp far off makes tremble for pure fear Thy soul-struck mother, piercing like a sword The immortal womb that bare thee; by the waves 700 That no man bridles and that bound thy world, And by the winds and storms of all the sea, He swears to raze from eyeshot of the sun This city named not of his father's name, And wash to deathward down one flood of doom This whole fresh brood of earth yeaned naturally, Green yet and faint in its first blade, unblown With yellow hope of harvest; so do thou, Seeing whom thy time is come to meet, for fear Yield, or gird up thy force to fight and die. 710

ERECHTHEUS.

To fight then be it; for if to die or live, No man but only a God knows this much yet Seeing us fare forth, who bear but in our hands The weapons not the fortunes of our fight; For these now rest as lots that yet undrawn Lie in the lap of the unknown hour; but this I know, not thou, whose hollow mouth of storm Is but a warlike wind, a sharp salt breath That bites and wounds not; death nor life of mine Shall give to death or lordship of strange kings 720 The soul of this live city, nor their heel Bruise her dear brow discrowned, nor snaffle or goad Wound her free mouth or stain her sanguine side Yet masterless of man; so bid thy lord Learn ere he weep to learn it, and too late Gnash teeth that could not fasten on her flesh, And foam his life out in dark froth of blood Vain as a wind's waif of the loud-mouthed sea Torn from the wave's edge whitening. Tell him this; Though thrice his might were mustered for our scathe 730 And thicker set with fence of thorn-edged spears Than sands are whirled about the wintering beach When storms have swoln the rivers, and their blasts Have breached the broad sea-banks with stress of sea, That waves of inland and the main make war As men that mix and grapple; though his ranks Were more to number than all wildwood leaves The wind waves on the hills of all the world, Yet should the heart not faint, the head not fall, The breath not fail of Athens. Say, the Gods 740 From lips that have no more on earth to say Have told thee this the last good news or ill That I shall speak in sight of earth and sun Or he shall hear and see them: for the next That ear of his from tongue of mine may take Must be the first word spoken underground From dead to dead in darkness. Hence; make haste, Lest war's fleet foot be swifter than thy tongue And I that part not to return again On him that comes not to depart away 750 Be fallen before thee; for the time is full, And with such mortal hope as knows not fear I go this high last way to the end of all.

CHORUS.