CASS. _Woe! For my hapless doom! To fill the cup, I tell my own sad tale! Why hast thou brought me to this place? Oh misery! To die with thee? What else? To die!... To die!... Paris, thy wedding hath destroyed thy house, Yea, and thy sister!—O Scamander stream! Our fathers drank of thee and by thy shore I grew, I flourished. Oh unhappy I! But now by dark Cocytus and the banks Of Acheron, my prophecies shall sound._[19] The Elders begin to understand; but still the drift of her message is only partly clear to them. They realize that she is distraught, fearing some dreadful fate for herself; they have, too, a glimmering fear of danger to the king. But they cannot comprehend what it may be; and the thought of succour never dawns upon their dull old wits. They speak gently to Cassandra; but again her message seems to tear her with its force and urgency. “_No longer, like a newly married girl, My word shall peep behind a veil, but, flashing With panted vehemence to meet the day, ‘Twill dash, against the shores of Light, a sorrow Of mightier volume._“[19] Then, point by point, she goes with studied clarity over all the “trail of long-past crime.” So long as this is her theme, the Elders understand and confirm her words. But when, rising again on the wings of prophecy and therefore to a rapt and obscure utterance, she foretells the fall of Agamemnon and her own death, they are again at sea. She pauses for an instant, baffled; she knows that her end is imminent, and in her despair she casts stinging words at them for their stupidity and inaction. Never has Apollo’s ban wrought so bitterly; and in the extremity of her anguish she declares that she will call upon the god no longer. She strips herself of the sacred emblems and flings them from her. “_Why wear I still these mockeries of my soul, This wand, these fillets round my neck? I tear ye Thus! Go to your destruction ere I die! To pieces with you! Lead the way! I follow! Enrich some other life with misery.... I will go forward! I will dare to die! Hail, then, thou gate of Hell!_“[19] She takes a few steps toward the palace; but her courage fails for a moment. The reek of blood in her nostrils stifles her, and she recoils. In her last words passion and strength alike fade out, giving place to a pathetic human appeal: “_O strangers! friends! I shrink not idly, like some timorous bird Before a bush! Bear record in that day When I am dead...._“[19] And the old men, as she passes slowly out of sight, wail over her what is perhaps her most fitting epitaph: