AGAMEMNON. First Argos hail! and ye, my country's gods, Who worked my safe return, and nerved my arm With vengeance against Priam! for the gods, Taught by no glozing tongue, but by the sight Of their own eyes knew justice; voting ruin And men-destroying death to ancient Troy, Their fatal pebbles in the bloody urn Not doubtingly they dropt; the other vase, Unfed with hope of suffrage-bearing hand, Stood empty. Now the captured city's smoke Points where it fell. Raves Ruin's storm; the winds With crumbled dust and dissipated gold Float grossly laden. To the immortal gods These thanks, fraught with rich memory of much good, We pay; they taught our hands to spread the net With anger-whetted wit; a woman's frailty Laid bare old Ilium to the Argive bite, And with the setting Pleiads outleapt a birth Of strong shield-bearers from the fateful horse. A fierce flesh-tearing lion leapt their wails, {66} And licked a surfeit of tyrannic blood. This prelude to the gods. As for thy words Of friendly welcome, I return thy greeting, And as your thought, so mine; for few are gifted With such rich store of love, to see a friend Preferred and feel no envy; 'tis a disease Possessing mortal men, a poison lodged Close by the heart, eating all joy away With double barb--has own mischance who suffers And bliss of others sitting at his gate, Which when he sees he groans. I know it well; They who seemed most my friends, and many seemed, Were but the mirrored show, the shadowy ghost Of something like to friendship, substanceless. Ulysses only, most averse to sail, Was still most ready an the yoke with me To bear the harness; living now or dead, This praise I frankly give him. For the rest, The city and the gods, we will take counsel In full assembly freely. What is good We will give heed that it be lasting; where Disease the cutting or the caustic cure Demands, we will apply it. I, meanwhile, My hearth and home salute, and greet the gods, Who, as they sent me to the distant fray, Have brought me safely back. Fair victory, Once mine, may she dwell with me evermore!