CLYTEMNESTRA. Aye, now, for me, thou hast thy words of fate; Exile from Argos and the people’s hate For ever! Against him no word was cried, When, recking not, as ’twere a beast that died, With flocks abounding o’er his wide domain, He slew his child, my love, my flower of pain, … Great God, as magic for the winds of Thrace! Why was not he man-hunted from his place, To purge the blood that stained him? … When the deed Is mine, oh, then thou art a judge indeed! But threat thy fill. I am ready, and I stand Content; if thy hand beateth down my hand, Thou rulest. If aught else be God’s decree, Thy lesson shall be learned, though late it be. CHORUS. Thy thought, it is very proud; Thy breath is the scorner’s breath; Is not the madness loud In thy heart, being drunk with death? Yea, and above thy brow A star of the wet blood burneth! Oh, doom shall have yet her day, The last friend cast away, When lie doth answer lie And a stab for a stab returneth! CLYTEMNESTRA. And heark what Oath-gods gather to my side! By my dead child’s Revenge, now satisfied, By Mortal Blindness, by all Powers of Hell Which Hate, to whom in sacrifice he fell, My Hope shall walk not in the house of Fear, While on my hearth one fire yet burneth clear, One lover, one Aigisthos, as of old! What should I fear, when fallen here I hold This foe, this scorner of his wife, this toy And fool of each Chryseis under Troy; And there withal his soothsayer and slave, His chanting bed-fellow, his leman brave, Who rubbed the galleys’ benches at his side. But, oh, they had their guerdon as they died! For he lies thus, and she, the wild swan’s way, Hath trod her last long weeping roundelay, And lies, his lover, ravisht o’er the main For his bed’s comfort and my deep disdain. CHORUS. (_Some Elders_.) Would God that suddenly With no great agony, No long sick-watch to keep, My hour would come to me, My hour, and presently Bring the eternal, the Unwaking Sleep, Now that my Shepherd, he Whose love watched over me, Lies in the deep! ANOTHER. For woman’s sake he endured and battled well, And by a woman’s hand he fell. OTHERS. What hast thou done, O Helen blind of brain, O face that slew the souls on Ilion’s plain, One face, one face, and many a thousand slain? The hate of old that on this castle lay, Builded in lust, a husband’s evil day, Hath bloomed for thee a perfect flower again And unforgotten, an old and burning stain Never to pass away. CLYTEMNESTRA. Nay, pray not for the hour of death, being tried Too sore beneath these blows Neither on Helen turn thy wrath aside, The Slayer of Men, the face which hath destroyed Its thousand Danaan souls, and wrought a wide Wound that no leech can close. CHORUS. —Daemon, whose heel is set On the House and the twofold kin Of the high Tantalidae, A power, heavy as fate, Thou wieldest through woman’s sin, Piercing the heart of me! —Like a raven swoln with hate He hath set on the dead his claw, He croaketh a song to sate His fury, and calls it Law!