Agamemnon

Off stands all Resistance

Afar in the distance!

Of these I witless am — these prophesyings.

But those I knew: for the whole city bruits them.

Ah, unhappy one, this thou consummatest?

Thy husband, thy bed’s common guest,

In the bath having brightened. .. How shall I declare

Consummation? It soon will be there:

For hand after hand she outstretches,

At life as she reaches!

Nor yet I’ve gone with thee! for — after riddles —

Now, in blind oracles, I feel resourceless.

Eh, eh, papai, papai,

What this, I espy?

Some net of Haides undoubtedly

Nay, rather, the snare

Is she who has share

In his bed, who takes part in the murder there!

But may a revolt —

Unceasing assault —

On the Race, raise a shout

Sacrificial, about

A victim — by stoning —

For murder atoning!

What this Erinus which i’ the house thou callest

To raise her cry? Not me thy word enlightens!

To my heart has run

A drop of the crocus-dye:

Which makes for those

On earth by the spear that lie,

A common close

With life’s descending sun.

Swift is the curse begun!

How! How!

See — see quick!

Keep the bull from the cow!

In the vesture she catching him, strikes him now

With the black-horned trick,

And he falls in the watery vase!

Of the craft-killing cauldron I tell thee the case!

I would not boast to be a topping critic

Of oracles: but to some sort of evil

I liken these. From oracles, what good speech

To mortals, beside, is sent?

It comes of their evils: these arts word-abounding that sing the event

Bring the fear’t is their office to teach.

Ah me, ah me —

Of me unhappy, evil-destined fortunes!

For I bewail my proper woe

As, mine with his, all into one I throw.

Why hast thou hither me unhappy brought?

— Unless that I should die with him — for nought!

What else was sought?

Thou art some mind-mazed creature, god-possessed:

And all about thyself dost wail

A lay — no lay!

Like some brown nightingale

Insatiable of noise, who — well-away! —

From her unhappy breast

Keeps moaning Itus, Itus, and his life

With evils, flourishing on each side, rife.

Ah me, ah me,

The fate o’ the nightingale, the clear resounder!

For a body wing-borne have the gods cast round her,

And sweet existence, from misfortunes free:

But for myself remains a sundering

With spear, the two-edged thing!

Whence hast thou this on-rushing god-involving pain

And spasms in vain?

For, things that terrify,

With changing unintelligible cry

Thou strikest up in tune, yet all the while

After that Orthian style!

Whence hast thou limits to the oracular road,

That evils bode?

Ah me, the nuptials, the nuptials of Paris, the deadly to friends!

Ah me, of Skamandros the draught

Paternal! There once, to these ends,

On thy banks was I brought,

The unhappy! And now, by Kokutos and Acheron’s shore

I shall soon be, it seems, these my oracles singing once more!

Why this word, plain too much,

Hast thou uttered? A babe might learn of such!

I am struck with a bloody bite — here under —

At the fate woe-wreaking

Of thee shrill shrieking:

To me who hear — a wonder!

Ah me, the toils — the toils of the city

The wholly destroyed: ah, pity,

Of the sacrificings my father made

In the ramparts’ aid —

Much slaughter of grass-fed flocks — that afforded no cure

That the city should not, as it does now, the burthen endure!

But I, with the soul on fire,

Soon to the earth shall cast me and expire.

To things, on the former consequent,

Again hast thou given vent:

And ’t is some evil-meaning fiend doth move thee,

Heavily falling from above thee,

To melodize thy sorrows — else, in singing,