Page:Four Plays of Aeschylus (Cookson).djvu/74

Meseemeth none of mortal birth
That tide of men dare brave,
A sea that delugeth the earth,
A vast resistless wave.
No! Persia's matchless millions
No human power can quell,
Such native valour arms her sons,
Such might incomparable!
For Fate from immemorial age
Chose out her sons for power:
Bade them victorious war to wage
And breach the bastioned tower:
In chivalry to take delight
Where clashing squadrons close:
Kingdoms and polities the might
Of their strong arm o'erthrows.
They gaze on ocean lawns that leap
With bickering billows gray
Swept by fierce winds; their myriads sweep
Ocean's immense highway,
Where, leashed with cables fibre-fine,
Their buoyant galleys bridge
The rough waves of the sundering brine
From ridge to crested ridge.
And yet what man, of woman born,
Outwits the guile of God?
The pit He digs what foot may scorn,
Though with all lightness shod?
For ruin first with laughing face
Lures man into the net,
Whence never wight of mortal race
Leapt free and scatheless yet.