University of Virginia Library

I am the mad Cassandra: I have bought
The truth by mighty suffering and great sin;
I roam a wretched woman and a seer,
Crazy, forlorn, and waiting for my doom.
Once in my father's palace I abode,
Once, in the golden careless days of youth,
Not the wan spectre that ye see me now,
But a bright bloom of beauty; so I dwelt,
From wisdom and from wisdom's woes afar,
In hateful blindness and unvalued bliss.
For ever pined I in my happiness,
And cast into the darkness longing eyes,
And ever plucked I at the envious veil
That still would hide delightful days from me.
At last I ventured; mortal I aspired
To be as are the gods, and had my wish,
And thought to trifle with the God that gave,
To have the gift and not to pay the price.
Now know from madness and from woe too late!
The gods cannot be cheated, nor forget.

Always I wander in a lifeless life,
Through formless void, where ever on the sense
Presses a night, a load unspeakable
Of a dull darkness, horrible to be felt.
Where I but live, nor see, nor hear, nor know,
Save that I feel for ever that I live,
And that to live and feel is misery.
Sometimes the veil is lifted, and I wake,
And stare, and find myself again in Troy,
As in the golden careless days of old.
I see the faces of my countrymen,
And know my treasure and its cost, and wish
To give my treasure, not its cost, to them.
I stand and call within the market-place,
And all men gather round me, and there rings
A horrid voice and tingles in my ears,
And fearful laughter crackles in its thorns.
“There is the mad Cassandra, see! she tells
Of fancied fates and visionary wars:
How some Achilles thunders from the strand,
How Hector's knees are loosèd at the sound,
And Xanthus runs all bloody to the sea:
How Priam, widowed of his fifty sons,
Sinks in the ruin of his flaming halls:
And how some Helen brings this woe on us,
A soft, weak thing of coloured eyes and hair.
Out on her frenzy! neighbours, let us go:
We have no leisure to stand idle here,
And listen to the clack of crazy tongues.
Do you not know Prince Paris goes to-day?
See! the breeze quickens and Poseidon calls,
The rowers hasten and the sails are set;
Come, let us bear our darling to the sea,
And wish him fortune in his loves in Greece,
And meeting with fair women and brave men.
Leave her to screech her crazy chants alone,
Her with her Helens and her fantasies.”

So speak they, and the air grows thick with blood,
And the known faces straight are thin and pale,
And flit like spectres in the market-place.
And the known temples reel like drunken things
Struck by th' Earthshaker's trident, as the God,
He whom they cheated, brings their doom on them:
And Heré towers before the Scadan gate,
And laughs, and calls her Argives from the sea;
And other Argives hold the citadel,
And there are Argives everywhere; and one,
Some Aias flashes flaming eyes on me.
I reel, and so I pass to night again,
Again to wake, to speak and pass, and add
Their hollow laugh and awful doom to mine.