Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Robert Browning, Ed.

CHOROS.
Thuestes' feast, indeed, on flesh of children,
I went with, and I shuddered. Fear too holds me
Listing what's true as life, nowise out-imaged.

KASSANDRA.
I say, thou Agamemnon's fate shalt look on.

CHOROS.
Speak good words, O unhappy! Set mouth sleeping!

KASSANDRA.
But Paian stands in no stead to the speech here.

CHOROS.
Nay, if the thing be near: but never be it!

KASSANDRA.
Thou, indeed, prayest: they to kill are busy.

CHOROS.
Of what man is it ministered, this sorrow?

KASSANDRA.
There again, wide thou look'st of my foretellings.

CHOROS.
For, the fulfiller's scheme I have not gone with.

KASSANDRA.
And yet too well I know the speech Hellenic.

CHOROS.
For Puthian oracles, thy speech, and hard too.

KASSANDRA
Papai: what fire this! and it comes upon me!
Ototoi, Lukeion Apollon, ah me -- me!
She, the two-footed lioness that sleeps with
The wolf, in absence of the generous lion,
Kills me the unhappy one: and as a poison
Brewing, to put my price too in the anger,
She vows, against her mate this weapon whetting
To pay him back the bringing me, with slaughter.
Why keep I then these things to make me laughed at,
Both wands and, round my neck, oracular fillets?
Thee, at least, ere my own fate will I ruin:
Go, to perdition falling! Boons exchange we --
Some other Até in my stead make wealthy!
See there -- himself, Apollon stripping from me
The oracular garment! having looked upon me
-- Even in these adornments, laughed by friends at,
As good as foes, i' the balance weighed: and vainly --
For, called crazed stroller, -- as I had been gipsy,
Beggar, unhappy, starved to death, -- I bore it.
And now the Prophet -- prophet me undoing,
Has led away to these so deadly fortunes!
Instead of my sire's altar, waits the hack-block
She struck with first warm bloody sacrificing!
Yet nowise unavenged of gods will death be:
For there shall come another, our avenger,
The mother-slaying scion, father's doomsman:
Fugitive, wanderer, from this land an exile,
Back shall he come, -- for friends, copestone these curses!
For there is sworn a great oath from the gods that
Him shall bring hither his fallen sire's prostration.
Why make I then, like an indweller, moaning?
Since at the first I foresaw Ilion's city
Suffering as it has suffered: and who took it,
Thus by the judgment of the gods are faring.
I go, will suffer, will submit to dying!
But, Haides' gates -- these same I call, I speak to,
And pray that on an opportune blow chancing,
Without a struggle, -- blood the calm death bringing
In easy outflow, -- I this eye may close up!