As one that half asleep at dawn recalls
     A night of Horror!

          CASSANDRA

     Hither, whither, Phoebus?  And with whom,
     Leading me, lighting me—­

          CHORUS

     I can answer that—­

          CASSANDRA

     Down to what slaughter-house! 
     Foh! the smell of carnage through the door
     Scares me from it—­drags me toward it—­
       Phoebus Apollo!  Apollo!

          CHORUS

     One of the dismal prophet-pack, it seems,
     That hunt the trail of blood.  But here at fault—­
     This is no den of slaughter, but the house
     Of Agamemnon.

          CASSANDRA

       Down upon the towers,
     Phantoms of two mangled children hover—­and a famished man,
     At an empty table glaring, seizes and devours!

          CHORUS

     Thyestes and his children!  Strange enough
     For any maiden from abroad to know,
     Or, knowing—­

          CASSANDRA

       And look! in the chamber below
     The terrible Woman, listening, watching,
     Under a mask, preparing the blow
     In the fold of her robe—­

CHORUS

  Nay, but again at fault: 

For in the tragic story of this House—­
Unless, indeed the fatal Helen—­No
woman—­

CASSANDRA

No Woman—­Tisiphone!  Daughter
Of Tartarus—­love-grinning Woman above,
Dragon-tailed under—­honey-tongued, Harpy-clawed,
Into the glittering meshes of slaughter
She wheedles, entices him into the poisonous
Fold of the serpent—­

CHORUS

Peace, mad woman, peace! 
Whose stony lips once open vomit out
Such uncouth horrors.

CASSANDRA

                      I tell you the lioness

Slaughters the Lion asleep; and lifting
Her blood-dripping fangs buried deep in his mane,
Glaring about her insatiable, bellowing,
Bounds hither—­Phoebus Apollo, Apollo, Apollo! 
Whither have you led me, under night alive with fire,
Through the trampled ashes of the city of my sire,
From my slaughtered kinsmen, fallen throne, insulted shrine,
Slave-like to be butchered, the daughter of a royal line!

From Edward Fitzgerald’s Version of the ‘Agamemnon.’

     THE LAMENT OF THE OLD NURSE

          NURSE

     Our mistress bids me with all speed to call
     Aegisthus to the strangers, that he come
     And hear more clearly, as a man from man,
     This newly brought report.  Before her slaves,
     Under set eyes of melancholy cast,
     She hid her inner chuckle at the events
     That have been brought to pass—­too well for her,
     But for this house and hearth most miserably,—­
     As in the tale the strangers