Works of Aeschylus - Aeschylus [16]
Thou readest all thy fate, how, thus unscared,
Dost thou approach the altar of thy doom,
As fronts the knife some victim, heaven-controlled?
Cassandra:
Friends, there is no avoidance in delay.
Chorus:
Yet who delays the longest, his the gain.
Cassandra:
The day is come--flight were small gain to me!
Chorus:
O brave endurance of a soul resolved!
Cassandra:
That were ill praise, for those of happier doom.
Chorus:
All fame is happy, even famous death.
Cassandra:
Ah sire, ah brethren, famous once were ye!
She moves to enter the house, then starts back.
Chorus:
What fear is this that scares thee from the house?
Cassandra:
Pah!
Chorus:
What is this cry? some dark despair of soul?
Cassandra:
Pah! the house fumes with stench and spilth of blood.
Chorus:
How? 'tis the smell of household offerings.
Cassandra:
'Tis rank as charnel-scent from open graves.
Chorus:
Thou canst not mean this scented Syrian nard?
Cassandra:
Nay, let me pass within to cry aloud
The monarch's fate and mine--enough of life.
Ah friends!
Bear to me witness, since I fall in death,
That not as birds that shun the bush and scream
I moan in idle terror. This attest
When for my death's revenge another dies,
A woman for a woman, and a man
Falls, for a man ill-wedded to his curse.
Grant me this boon--the last before I die.
Chorus:
Brave to the last! I mourn thy doom foreseen.
Cassandra:
Once more one utterance, but not of wail,
Though for my death--and then I speak no more.
I thou whose beam I shall not see again,
To thee I cry, Let those whom vengeance calls
To slay their kindred's slayers, quit withal
The death of me, the slave, the fenceless prey.
Ah state of mortal man! in time of weal,
A line, a shadow! and if ill fate fall,
One wet sponge-sweep wipes all our trace away--
And this I deem less piteous, of the twain.
Exit into the palace.
Chorus:
Too true it is! our mortal state
With bliss is never satiate,
And none, before the palace high
And stately of prosperity,
Cries to us with a voice of fear,
"Away! 'tis ill to enter here!"
Lo! this our lord hath trodden down,
By grace of heaven, old Priam's town,
And praised as god he stands once more
On Argos' shore!
Yet now--if blood shed long ago
Cries out that other blood shall flow--
His life-blood, his, to pay again
The stern requital of the slain--
Peace to that braggart's vaunting vain,
Who, having heard the chieftain's tale,
Yet boasts of bliss untouched by bale!
A loud cry from within.
Voice of Agamemnon:
O I am sped--a deep, a mortal blow.
Chorus:
Listen, listen! who is screaming as in mortal agony?
Voice of Agamemnon:
O! O! again, another, another blow!
Chorus:
The bloody act is over--I have heard the monarch cry--
Let us swiftly take some counsel, lest we too be doomed to die.
One of the Chorus:
'Tis best, I judge, aloud for aid to call,
Ho! loyal Argives! to the palace, all!
Another:
Better, I deem, ourselves to bear the aid,
And drag the deed to light, while drips the blade.
Another:
Such will is mine, and what thou say'st I say:
Swiftly to act! the time brooks no delay.
Another:
Ay, for 'tis plain, this prelude of their song
Foretells its close in tyranny and wrong.
Another:
Behold, we tarry--but thy name, Delay,
They spurn, and press with sleepless hand to slay.
Another:
I know not what 'twere well to counsel now--
Who wills to act, 'tis his to counsel how.
Another:
Thy doubt is mine: for when a man is slain,
I have no words to bring his life again.
Another:
What? e'en for life's sake, bow us to obey
These house-defilers and their tyrant sway?
Another:
Unmanly doom! 'twere better far to die--
Death is a gentler lord than tyranny.
Another:
Think well--must cry or sign of woe or pain
Fix our conclusion that the chief is slain?
Another:
Such talk befits us when the deed we see--
Conjecture dwells afar from certainty.
Leader of the Chorus:
I read one will from many a diverse word,
To know aright, how