University of Virginia Library

I
[Aischylos, Agamemnon, 1266–1318.]

Chorus—Kassandra—Agamemnon.
CHORUS.
O wretched woman indeed, and O most wise,
Much hast thou said; but if thou knowest well
Thy doom, why, like a heifer, by the Gods
Led to the altar, tread so brave of soul?

KASSANDRA.
There 's no escape, O friends, the time is full.

CHORUS.
Nathless, the last to enter gains in time.

KASSANDRA.
The day has come; little I make by flight.

CHORUS.
Thou art bold indeed, and of a daring spirit!

KASSANDRA.
Such sayings from the happy none hath heard.

CHORUS.
Grandly to die is still a grace to mortals.

KASSANDRA.
Alas, my sire,—thee and thy noble brood!

(She starts back from the entrance.)
CHORUS.
How now? What horror turns thee back again?

KASSANDRA.
Faugh! faugh!

CHORUS.
Why such a cry? There 's something chills thy soul!

KASSANDRA.
The halls breathe murder,—ay, they drip with blood.

CHORUS.
How? 'T is the smell of victims at the hearth.

KASSANDRA.
Nay, but the exhalation of the tomb!

CHORUS.
No Syrian dainty, this, of which thou speakest.

KASSANDRA
(at the portal).
Yet will I in the palace wail my own
And Agamemnon's fate! Enough of life!
Alas! O friends!
Yet not for naught I quail, not as a bird
Snared in the bush: bear witness, though I die,
A woman's slaughter shall requite my own,
And, for this man ill-yoked, a man shall fall!
Thus prays of you a stranger, at death's door.

CHORUS.
Lost one, I rue with thee thy foretold doom!

KASSANDRA.
Once more I fain would utter words, once more,—
'T is my own threne! And I invoke the Sun,
By his last beam, that my detested foes
May pay no less to them who shall avenge me,
Than I who die an unresisting slave!

(She enters the palace.)
CHORUS.
Of Fortune was never yet enow
To mortal man; and no one ever
Her presence from his house would sever
And point, and say, “Come no more nigh!”
Unto our King granted the Gods on high
That Priam's towers should bow,
And homeward, crowned of Heaven, hath he come;
But now if, for the ancestral blood that lay
At his doors, he falls,—and the dead, that cursed his home,
He, dying, must in full requite,—
What manner of man is one that would not pray
To be born with a good attendant Sprite?

(An outcry within the palace.)
AGAMEMNON.
Woe 's me! I am stricken a deadly blow within!

CHORUS.
Hark! Who is 't cries “a blow”? Who meets his death?

AGAMEMNON.
Woe 's me! again! a second time I am stricken!

CHORUS.
The deed, methinks, from the King's cry, is done.
Quick, let us see what help may be in counsel!