Page:Four Plays of Aeschylus (Cookson).djvu/204

And then at last to Inachus there raught
A saying that flashed clear; the drift, that I
Must be put out from home and country, forced
To be a wanderer at the ends of the earth,
A thing devote and dedicate; and if
I would not, there should fall a thunderbolt
From Zeus, with blinding flash, and utterly
Destroy my race. So spake the oracle
Of Loxias. In sorrow he obeyed,
And from beneath his roof drove forth his child
Grieving as he grieved, and from house and home
Bolted and barred me out. But the high hand
Of Zeus bear hardly on the rein of fate.
And, instantly—even in a moment—mind
And body suffered strange distortion. Horned
Even as ye see me now, and with sharp bite
Of gadfly pricked, with high-flung skip, stark-mad,
I bounded, galloping headlong on, until
I came to the sweet waters of the stream
Kerchneian, hard by Lerna's spring. And thither
Argus, the giant herdsman, fierce and fell
As a strong wine unmixed, with hateful cast
Of all his cunning eyes upon the trail,
Gave chase and tracked me down. And there he perished
By violent and sudden doom surprised.
But I with darting sting—the scorpion whip
Of angry Gods—am lashed from land to land.
Thou hast my story, and, if thou can'st tell
What I have still to suffer, speak; but do not
Moved by compassion with a lying tale
Warm my cold heart; no sickness of the soul
Is half so shameful as composed falsehoods.