The city's common folk, though they be naught.[1] 700
Yet are those others wiser a thousandfold,—
Had wisdom but audacity for ally.
Even so thou and thy brother sit enthroned,
For Troy puffed up, and that your generalship,
By others' toils and pains exalted high. 705
But I will teach thee nevermore to count
Paris of Ida foe more stern than Peleus,
Except thou vanish from this roof with speed,
Thou and thy childless daughter, whom my son
By the hair shall grasp and hale her through these halls,— 710
The barren heifer, who will not endure
The fruitful, seeing herself hath children none!
What, if her womb from bearing is shut up,
Childless of issue must mine house abide?
Hence from her, thralls!—E'en let me see the man 715
Will let me from unmanacling her hands!
Uplift thee, that the trembling hands of eld
May now unravel these thongs' twisted knots.
Thus, O thou dastard, hast thou galled her wrists?
Didst think to enmesh a bull or lion here?[2] 720
Didst fear lest she should snatch a sword, and chase
Thee hence? Steal hither 'neath mine arms, my bairn:
Help loose thy mother's bonds. I'll rear thee yet
In Phthia, their grim foe. If spear-renown
- ↑ "There thou might'st behold
The great image of authority:
A dog's obeyed in office." King Lear, iv, 6. - ↑ "Hard bound with hempen span,
As though they held a lion there,
And not a fenceless man."
(Aytoun: Execution of Montrose.)
