Snort the wild steeds, and from their fiery breath
Along their manes and down the circling wheels
Scatter the foam."—(Lord Lytton.)
Six times they had rounded the goal at the end of the course; but in the seventh the horses of one chariot had proved unmanageable, and dashed against the next.
"Then order changed to ruin,
Car crashed on car; the wild Crissæan plain
Was sea-like strewed with wrecks; the Athenian saw,
Slackened his speed, and, wheeling round the marge,
Left the wild tumult of that tossing storm.
Behind Orestes, hitherto the last,
Had yet kept back his coursers for the close;
Now one sole rival left—on, on he flew,
And the sharp sound of the impelling scourge
Rang in the keen ears of the flying steeds.
He hears, he reaches—they are side by side—
Now one—the other—by a length the victor.
The courses all are past—the wheels erect—
All safe—when, as the hurrying coursers round
The fatal pillar dashed, the wretched boy
Slackened the left rein: on the column's edge
Crashed the frail axle: headlong from the car,
Caught and all meshed within the reins, he fell;
And masterless the mad steeds raged along!
Loud from that mighty multitude arose
A shriek—a shout! But yesterday such deeds,
To-day such doom! Now whirled upon the earth,
Now his limbs dashed aloft, they dragged him—those
Wild horses—till all gory from the wheels
Released,—and no man, not his nearest friends,
Could in that mangled corpse have traced Orestes
