Works of Aeschylus - Aeschylus [14]
Wherewith the brown melodious bird
Doth ever Itys! Itys! wail,
Deep-bowered in sorrow, all its little life-time's day!
Cassandra:
Ah for thy fate, O shrill-voiced nightingale!
Some solace for thy woes did Heaven afford,
Clothed thee with soft brown plumes, and life apart from wail?
But for my death is edged the double-biting sword!
Chorus:
What pangs are these, what fruitless pain,
Sent on thee from on high?
Thou chantest terror's frantic strain,
Yet in shrill measured melody.
How thus unerring canst thou sweep along
The prophet's path of boding song?
Cassandra:
Woe, Paris, woe on thee! thy bridal joy
Was death and fire upon thy race and Troy!
And woe for thee, Scamander's flood!
Beside thy banks, O river fair,
I grew in tender nursing care
From childhood unto maidenhood!
Now not by thine, but by Cocytus' stream
And Acheron's banks shall ring my boding scream.
Chorus:
Too plain is all, too plain!
A child might read aright thy fateful strain.
Deep in my heart their piercing fang
Terror and sorrow set, the while I heard
That piteous, low, tender word,
Yet to mine ear and heart a crushing pang.
Cassandra:
Woe for my city, woe for Ilion's fall!
Father, how oft with sanguine stain
Streamed on thine altar-stone the blood of cattle, slain
That heaven might guard our wall!
But all was shed in vain.
Low lie the shattered towers whereas they fell,
And I--ah burning heart!--shall soon lie low as well.
Chorus:
Of sorrow is thy song, of sorrow still!
Alas, what power of ill
Sits heavy on thy heart and bids thee tell
In tears of perfect moan thy deadly tale?
Some woe--I know not what--must close thy piteous wail.
Cassandra:
List! for no more the presage of my soul,
Bride-like, shall peer from its secluding veil;
But as the morning wind blows clear the east,
More bright shall blow the wind of prophecy,
And as against the low bright line of dawn
Heaves high and higher yet the rolling wave,
So in the clearing skies of prescience
Dawns on my soul a further, deadlier woe,
And I will speak, but in dark speech no more.
Bear witness, ye, and follow at my side--
I scent the trail of blood, shed long ago.
Within this house a choir abidingly
Chants in harsh unison the chant of ill;
Yea, and they drink, for more enhardened joy,
Man's blood for wine, and revel in the halls,
Departing never, Furies of the home.
They sit within, they chant the primal curse,
Each spitting hatred on that crime of old,
The brother's couch, the love incestuous
That brought forth hatred to the ravisher.
Say, is my speech or wild and erring now,
Or doth its arrow cleave the mark indeed?
They called me once, "The prophetess of lies,
The wandering hag, the pest of every door--"
Attest ye now, She knows in very sooth
"The house's curse, the storied infamy."
Chorus:
Yet how should oath--how loyally soe'er
I swear it--aught avail thee? In good sooth,
Agamemnon:
My wonder meets thy claim: I stand amazed
That thou, a maiden born beyond the seas,
Dost as a native know and tell aright
Tales of a city of an alien tongue.
Cassandra:
That is my power--a boon Apollo gave.
Chorus:
God though he were, yearning for mortal maid?
Cassandra:
Ay! what seemed shame of old is shame no more.
Chorus:
Such finer sense suits not with slavery.
Cassandra:
He strove to win me, panting for my love.
Chorus:
Came ye by compact unto bridal joys?
Cassandra:
Nay--for I plighted troth, then foiled the god.
Chorus:
Wert thou already dowered with prescience?
Cassandra:
Yea--prophetess to Troy of all her doom.
Chorus:
How left thee then Apollo's wrath unscathed?
Cassandra:
I, false to him, seemed prophet false to all.
Chorus:
Not so--to us at least thy words seem sooth.
Cassandra:
Woe for me, woe! Again the agony--
Dread pain that sees the future all too well
With ghastly preludes whirls and racks my soul.
Behold ye--yonder on the palace roof
The spectre-children sitting--look, such things
As dreams are made on, phantoms as of babes,
Horrible shadows, that