The gad-fly
strength
to agony!
Elizabeth Browning
And what hope can they bear,
These dying livers--living one day long?
Ah, seest thou not, my friend,
How feeble and slow
And like a dream, doth go
This poor blind manhood, drifted from its end?
And how no mortal wranglings can confuse
The harmony of Zeus?
Prometheus, I have learnt these things
From the sorrow in thy face.
Another song did fold its wings
Upon my lips in other days,
When round the bath and round the bed
The hymeneal chant instead
I sang for thee, and smiled,--
And thou didst lead, with gifts and vows,
Hesione, my father's child,
To be thy wedded spouse.
_IO enters_.
_Io. _ What land is this? what people is here?
And who is he that writhes, I see,
In the rock-hung chain?
Now what is the crime that hath brought thee to pain?
Now what is the land--make answer free--
Which I wander through, in my wrong and fear?
Ah! ah! ah me!
The gad-fly strength to agony!
O Earth, keep off that phantasm pale
Of earth-born Argus! --ah! --I quail
When my soul descries
That herdsman with the myriad eyes
Which seem, as he comes, one crafty eye
Graves hide him not, though he should die,
But he doggeth me in my misery
From the roots of death, on high--on high--
And along the sands of the siding deep,
All famine-worn, he follows me,
And his waxen reed doth undersound
The waters round
And giveth a measure that giveth sleep.
Woe, woe, woe!
Where shall my weary course be done?
What wouldst thou with me, Saturn's son?
And in what have I sinned, that I should go
Thus yoked to grief by thine hand for ever?
Ah! ah! dost vex me so
That I madden and shiver
Stung through with dread?
Flash the fire down to burn me!
Heave the earth up to cover me!
Plunge me in the deep, with the salt waves over me,
That the sea-beasts may be fed!
O king, do not spurn me
In my prayer!
For this wandering everlonger, evermore,
Hath overworn me,
And I know not on what shore
I may rest from my despair.
