AEGISTHUS Ah, well I know how exiles feed on hopes of their return! CHORUS Feed and batten on pollution of the right, while 'tis thy turn! AEGISTHUS Thou shalt pay, be well assured, heavy quittance for thy pride. CHORUS Crow and strut, with her beside thee, like a cock, his mate beside! CLYTEMNESTRA Heed not thou too highly of them--let the cur-pack growl and yell-- I and thou will rule the palace and will order all things well? Conclusion of _Agamemnon_. (Morshead.) 4 _Scene from the 'Hercules Mad' of Euripides_ _Translated by Robert Browning_ CHORUS OF OLD MEN Horror! Are we come to the self-same passion of fear, Old friends?--such a phantasm fronts me here Visible over the palace-roof! In flight, in flight, the laggard limb Bestir, and haste aloof From that on the roof there--grand and grim! O Paian, king! Be thou my safeguard from the woeful thing! IRIS Courage, old men! beholding here--Night's birth-- Madness, and me the handmaid of the gods, Iris: since to your town we come no plague-- Wage war against the house of but one man From Zeus and from Alkmene sprung, they say. Now, till he made an end of bitter toils Fate kept him safe, nor did his father Zeus Let us once hurt him, Here nor myself. But since he has toiled through Eurustheus' task Here desires to fix fresh blood on him-- Slaying his children; I desire it too. Up then, collecting the unsoftened heart, Unwedded virgin of black Night! Drive, drag, Frenzy upon the man here--whirls of brain Big with child-murder, while his feet leap gay. Let go the bloody cable its whole length! So that,--when o'er the Acherousian ford He has sent floating, by self-homicide, His beautiful boy-garland,--he may know First, Here's anger, what it is to him, And then learn mine. The gods are vile indeed And mortal matters vast if he 'scape free. MADNESS Certes, from well-born sire and mother too Had I my birth, whose blood is Night's and Heaven's; But here's my glory,--not to grudge the good! Nor love I raids against the friends of man. I wish, then, to persuade, before I see You stumbling, you and Here: trust my words! This man, the house of whom ye hound me to, Is not unfamed on earth, nor gods among; Since, having quelled waste land and savage sea, He alone raised again the falling rights Of gods--gone ruinous through impious men. Desire no mighty mischief, I advise! IRIS Give thou no thought to Here's faulty schemes! MADNESS Changing her step from faulty to fault-free! IRIS Not to be wise, did Zeus' wife send thee here!