He answer’d: “There is argued in your sight A worth that works not men for benefit, Like prollers or impostors; of which crew, The gentle black earth feeds not up a few, Here and there wand’rers, blanching tales and lies, Of neither praise, nor use. You move our eyes With form, our minds with matter, and our ears With elegant oration, such as bears A music in the order’d history It lays before us. Not Demodocus With sweeter strains hath us’d to sing to us All the Greek sorrows, wept out in your own. But say: Of all your worthy friends, were none Objected to your eyes that consorts were To Ilion with you, and serv’d destiny there? This night is passing long, unmeasur’d, none Of all my household would to bed yet; on, Relate these wondrous things. Were I with you, If you would tell me but your woes, as now, Till the divine Aurora show’d her head, I should in no night relish thought of bed.” “Most eminent king,” said he, “times all must keep, There’s time to speak much, time as much to sleep. But would you hear still, I will tell you still, And utter more, more miserable ill Of friends than yet, that scap’d the dismal wars, And perish’d homewards, and in household jars Wag’d by a wicked woman. The chaste Queen No sooner made these lady ghosts unseen, Here and there flitting, but mine eyesight won The soul of Agamemnon, Atreus’ son, Sad, and about him all his train of friends, That in Ægisthus’ house endur’d their ends With his stern fortune. Having drunk the blood, He knew me instantly, and forth a flood Of springing tears gush’d; out he thrust his hands, With will t’ embrace me, but their old commands Flow’d not about him, nor their weakest part. I wept to see, and moan’d him from my heart, And ask’d: ‘O Agamemnon! King of men! What sort of cruel death hath render’d slain Thy royal person? Neptune in thy fleet Heav’n and his hellish billows making meet, Rousing the winds? Or have thy men by land Done thee this ill, for using thy command, Past their consents, in diminution Of those full shares their worths by lot had won Of sheep or oxen? Or of any town, In covetous strife, to make their rights thine own In men or women prisoners?’ He replied: ‘By none of these in any right I died, But by Ægisthus and my murd’rous wife (Bid to a banquet at his house) my life Hath thus been reft me, to my slaughter led Like to an ox pretended to be fed. So miserably fell I, and with me My friends lay massacred, as when you see At any rich man’s nuptials, shot, or feast, About his kitchen white-tooth’d swine lie drest. The slaughters of a world of men thine eyes, Both private, and in prease of enemies, Have personally witness’d; but this one Would all thy parts have broken into moan, To see how strew’d about our cups and cates, As tables set with feast, so we with fates, All gash’d and slain lay, all the floor embrued With blood and brain. But that which most I rued, Flew from the heavy voice that Priam’s seed, Cassandra, breath’d, whom, she that wit doth feed