Agamemnon

Has led away to these so deadly fortunes!

Instead of my sire’s altar, waits the hack-block

She struck with first warm bloody sacrificing!

Yet nowise unavenged of gods will death be:

For there shall come another, our avenger,

The mother-slaying scion, father’s doomsman:

Fugitive, wanderer, from this land an exile,

Back shall he come, — for friends, copestone these curses!

For there is sworn a great oath from the gods that

Him shall bring hither his fallen sire’s prostration.

Why make I then, like an indweller, moaning?

Since at the first I foresaw Ilion’s city

Suffering as it has suffered: and who took it,

Thus by the judgment of the gods are faring.

I go, will suffer, will submit to dying!

But, Haides’ gates — these same I call, I speak to,

And pray that on an opportune blow chancing,

Without a struggle, — blood the calm death bringing

In easy outflow, — I this eye may close up!

O much unhappy, but, again, much learned

Woman, long hast thou outstretched! But if truly

Thou knowest thine own fate, how comes that, like to

A god-led steer, to altar bold thou treadest?

There’s no avoidance, — strangers, no some time more!

He last is, anyhow, by time advantaged.

It comes, the day: I shall by flight gain little.

But know thou patient art from thy brave spirit!

Such things hears no one of the happy-fortuned.

But gloriously to die — for man is grace, sure.

Ah, sire, for thee and for thy noble children!

But what thing is it? What fear turns thee backwards?

Alas, alas!

Why this Alas! if ’t is no spirit’s loathing?

Slaughter blood-dripping does the household smell of!

How else? This scent is of hearth-sacrifices.

Such kind of steam as from a tomb is proper!

No Surian honour to the House thou speak’st of!

But I will go, — even in the household wailing

My fate and Agamemnon’s. Life suffice me!

Ah, strangers!

I cry not ah — as bird at bush — through terror

Idly! to me, the dead this much bear witness:

When, for me — woman, there shall die a woman,

And, for a man ill-wived, a man shall perish!

This hospitality I ask as dying.

O sufferer, thee — thy foretold fate I pity.

Yet once for all, to speak a speech, I fain am:

No dirge, mine for myself! The sun I pray to,

Fronting his last light! — to my own avengers —

That from my hateful slayers they exact too

Pay for the dead slave — easy-managed hand’s work!

Alas for mortal matters! Happy-fortuned, —

Why, any shade would turn them: if unhappy,

By throws the wetting sponge has spoiled the picture!

And more by much in mortals this I pity.

The being well-to-do —

Insatiate a desire of this

Born with all mortals is,

Nor any is there who

Well-being forces off, aroints

From roofs whereat a finger points,

No more come in! exclaiming. This man, too,

To take the city of Priamos did the celestials give,

And, honoured by the god, he homeward comes;

But now if, of the former, he shall pay

The blood back, and, for those who ceased to live,

Dying, for deaths in turn new punishment he dooms—

Who, being mortal, would not pray

With an unmischievous

Daimon to have been born — who would not, hearing thus?

Ah me! I am struck — a right-aimed stroke within me!

Silence! Who is it shouts stroke — right-aimedly a wounded one?

Ah me! indeed again, — a second, struck by!

This work seems to me completed by this Ah me of the king’s;

But we somehow may together share in solid counsellings.

I, in the first place, my opinion tell you:

— To cite the townsmen, by help-cry, to house here.

To me, it seems we ought to fall upon them

At quickest — prove the fact by sword fresh-flowing!

And I, of such opinion the partaker,

Vote — to do something: not to wait — the main point!

’T is plain to see: for they prelude as though of

A tyranny the signs they gave the city.

For we waste time; while they, — this waiting’s glory

Treading to ground, — allow the hand no slumber.

I know not — chancing on some plan — to tell it:

’T is for the doer to plan of the deed also.

And I am such another: since I’m schemeless

How to raise up again by words — a dead man!

What, and, protracting life, shall we give way thus

To the disgracers of our home, these rulers?

Why, ’t is unbearable: but to die is better:

For death than tyranny is the riper finish!

What, by the testifying Ah me of him,

Shall we prognosticate the man as perished?

We must quite know ere speak these things concerning:

For to conjecture and quite know are two things.

This same to praise I from all sides abound in —

Clearly to know — Atreides, what he’s doing!

Much having been before to purpose spoken,