The Agamemnon of Aeschylus | Page 8

planted amid
his people a sharp thorn.
And no God hears his prayer, or, have they heard,
The man
so base-beguiled
They cast to scorn.
Paris to Argos came;
Love of a woman led him;
So God's altar he brought to shame,

Robbing the hand that fed him.
(_Helen's flight; the visions seen by the King's seers; the phantom of Helen and the
King's grief._)
She hath left among her people a noise of shield and sword, A tramp of men armed where
the long ships are moored;
She hath ta'en in her goings Desolation as a dower;
She
hath stept, stept quickly, through the great gated Tower,
And the thing that could not be, it hath been!
And the Seers they saw visions, and they
spoke of strange ill: "A Palace, a Palace; and a great King thereof:
A bed, a bed empty,
that was once pressed in love:
And thou, thou, what art thou? Let us be, thou so still,

Beyond wrath, beyond beseeching, to the lips reft of thee!" For she whom he desireth is
beyond the deep sea,
And a ghost in his castle shall be queen.
Images in sweet guise
Carven shall move him never,
Where is Love amid empty eyes?

Gone, gone for ever!
(_His dreams and his suffering; but the War that he made caused greater and wider
suffering._)
But a shape that is a dream, 'mid the phantoms of the night, Cometh near, full of tears,
bringing vain vain delight:
For in vain when, desiring, he can feel the joy's breath

--Nevermore! Nevermore!--from his arms it vanisheth,
On wings down the pathways of sleep.
In the mid castle hall, on the hearthstone of the Kings,
These griefs there be, and griefs
passing these,
But in each man's dwelling of the host that sailed the seas, A sad woman
waits; she has thoughts of many things,
And patience in her heart lieth deep.
Knoweth she them she sent,
Knoweth she? Lo, returning,
Comes in stead of the man
that went
Armour and dust of burning.
(_The return of the funeral urns; the murmurs of the People._)
And the gold-changer, Ares, who changeth quick for dead,
Who poiseth his scale in the

striving of the spears,
Back from Troy sendeth dust, heavy dust, wet with tears,

Sendeth ashes with men's names in his urns neatly spread.
And they weep over the men,
and they praise them one by one, How this was a wise fighter, and this nobly-slain--
"Fighting to win back another's wife!"
Till a murmur is begun,
And there steals an
angry pain
Against Kings too forward in the strife.
There by Ilion's gate
Many a soldier sleepeth,
Young men beautiful; fast in hate

Troy her conqueror keepeth.
(_For the Shedder of Blood is in great peril, and not unmarked by God. May I never be a
Sacker of Cities!_)
But the rumour of the People, it is heavy, it is chill;
And tho' no curse be spoken, like a
curse doth it brood;
And my heart waits some tiding which the dark holdeth still, For of
God not unmarked is the shedder of much blood.
And who conquers beyond right ... Lo,
the life of man decays; There be Watchers dim his light in the wasting of the years; He
falls, he is forgotten, and hope dies.
There is peril in the praise
Over-praised that he
hears;
For the thunder it is hurled from God's eyes.
Glory that breedeth strife,
Pride of the Sacker of Cities;
Yea, and the conquered
captive's life,
Spare me, O God of Pities!
DIVERS ELDERS.
--The fire of good tidings it hath sped the city through,
But who knows if a god
mocketh? Or who knows if all be true?
'Twere the fashion of a child,
Or a brain dream-beguiled,
To be kindled by the first

Torch's message as it burst,
And thereafter, as it dies, to die too.
--'Tis like a woman's sceptre, to ordain
Welcome to joy before the end is plain!
--Too lightly opened are a woman's ears;
Her fence downtrod by many trespassers,

And quickly crossed; but quickly lost
The burden of a woman's hopes or fears.
[_Here a break occurs in the action, like the descent of the curtain in a modern theatre. A
space of some days is assumed to have passed and we find the Elders again assembled_.
LEADER.
Soon surely shall we read the message right;
Were fire and beacon-call and lamps of
light
True speakers, or but happy lights, that seem
And are not, like sweet voices in a
dream.
I see a Herald yonder by the shore,
Shadowed with olive sprays. And from his
sore

Rent raiment cries a witness from afar,
Dry Dust, born brother to the Mire of war,


That mute he comes not, neither through the smoke
Of mountain forests shall his tale
be spoke;
But either shouting for a joyful day,
Or else.... But other thoughts I cast
away.
As good hath dawned, may good shine on, we pray!
--And whoso for this City prayeth aught
Else, let him reap the harvest of his thought!
[_Enter the_ HERALD, _running. His garments are torn and war-stained. He falls