Your child, and strewed salt meal upon her head,
Then were you sane, I ask you? 'Why not sane?'
Why, what did Ajax when the flock was slain?
He did no violence to his wife or child:
He cursed the Atridæ, true; his words were wild;
But against Teucer ne'er a hand he raised,
Nor e'en Ulysses: yet you call him crazed.
'But I, of purpose, soothed the gods with blood,
To gain our fleet free passage o'er the flood.'
Blood! ay, your own, you madman. 'Nay, not so:
My own, I grant it: but a madman's, no.'
"He that sees things amiss, his mind distraught
By guilty deeds, a madman will be thought;
And, so the path of reason once be missed,
Who cares if rage or folly gave the twist?
When Ajax falls with fury on the fold,
He shows himself a madman, let us hold:
When you, of purpose, do a crime to gain
A meed of empty glory, are you sane?
The heart that air-blown vanities dilate,
Will medicine say 'tis in its normal state?
Suppose a man in public chose to ride
With a white lambkin nestling at his side,
Called it his daughter, had it richly clothed,
And did his best to get it well betrothed,
The law would call him madman, and the care
Of him and of his goods would pass elsewhere.
You offer up your daughter for a lamb;
And are you rational? Don't say, I am.
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