CLYTEMNESTRA. Men! Citizens! ye reverend Argive seniors, No shame feel I, even in your face, to tell My husband-loving ways. Long converse lends Boldness to bashfulness. No foreign griefs, Mine own self-suffered woes I tell. While he Was camping far at Ilium, I at home Sat all forlorn, uncherished by the mate Whom I had chosen; this was woe enough Without enforcement; but, to try me further, A host of jarring rumours stormed my doors, Each fresh recital with a murkier hue Than its precedent; and I must hear all. If this my lord, had borne as many wounds In battle as the bloody fame recounted, He had been pierced throughout even as a net; And had he died as oft as Rumour slew him, {67} He might have boasted of a triple coil[n63] Like the three-bodied Geryon, while on earth (Of him below I speak not), and like him Been three times heaped with a cloak of funeral dust. Thus fretted by cross-grained reports, oft-times The knotted rope high-swung had held my neck, But that my friends with forceful aid prevented. Add that my son, pledge of our mutual vows, Orestes is not here; nor think it strange. Thy Phocian spear-guest,[n64] the most trusty Strophius, Took him in charge, a twofold danger urging First thine beneath the walls of Troy, and further The evil likelihood that, should the Greeks Be worsted in the strife, at home the voice Of many-babbling anarchy might cast The council down, and as man's baseness is, At fallen greatness insolently spurn. Moved by these thoughts I parted with my boy, And for no other cause. Myself the while So woe-worn lived, the fountains of my grief To their last drop were with much weeping drained; And far into the night my watch I've kept With weary eyes, while in my lonely room The night-torch faintly glimmered. In my dream The buzzing gnat, with its light-brushing wing, Startled the fretful sleeper; thou hast been In waking hours, as in sleep's fitful turns My only thought. But having bravely borne This weight of woe, now with blithe heart I greet Thee, my heart's lord, the watch-dog of the fold, The ship's sure mainstay, pillared shaft whereon Rests the high roof, fond parent's only child, Land seen by sailors past all hope, a day Lovely to look on when the storm hath broken, And to the thirsty wayfarer the flow Of gushing rill. O sweet it is, how sweet To see an end of the harsh yoke that galled us! These greetings to my lord; nor grudge me, friends, This breadth of welcome; sorrows we have known Ample enough. And now, thou precious head, Come from thy car; nay, do not set thy foot, The foot that trampled Troy, on common clay. What ho! ye laggard maids! why lags your task {68} Behind the hour? Spread purple where he treads. Fitly the broidered foot-cloth marks his path, Whom Justice leadeth to his long-lost home With unexpected train. What else remains Our sleepless zeal, with favour of the gods, Shall order as befits.