The Agamemnon of Aeschylus Translated into English...

WATCHMAN. This waste of year-long vigil I have prayed God for some respite, watching elbow-stayed, As sleuthhounds watch, above the Atreidae’s hall, Till well I know yon midnight festival Of swarming stars, and them that lonely go, Bearers to man of summer and of snow, Great lords and shining, throned in heavenly fire. And still I await the sign, the beacon pyre That bears Troy’s capture on a voice of flame Shouting o’erseas. So surely to her aim Cleaveth a woman’s heart, man-passioned! And when I turn me to my bed—my bed Dew-drenched and dark and stumbling, to which near Cometh no dream nor sleep, but alway Fear Breathes round it, warning, lest an eye once fain To close may close too well to wake again; Think I perchance to sing or troll a tune For medicine against sleep, the music soon Changes to sighing for the tale untold Of this house, not well mastered as of old. Howbeit, may God yet send us rest, and light The flame of good news flashed across the night.

Ha! O kindler of the dark, O daylight birth Of dawn and dancing upon Argive earth For this great end! All hail!—What ho, within! What ho! Bear word to Agamemnon’s queen To rise, like dawn, and lift in answer strong To this glad lamp her women’s triumph-song, If verily, verily, Ilion’s citadel Is fallen, as yon beacons flaming tell. And I myself will tread the dance before All others; for my master’s dice I score Good, and mine own to-night three sixes plain.

Oh, good or ill, my hand shall clasp again My dear lord’s hand, returning! Beyond that I speak not. A great ox hath laid his weight Across my tongue. But these stone walls know well, If stones had speech, what tale were theirs to tell. For me, to him that knoweth I can yet Speak; if another questions I forget.

[Exit into the Palace. The women’s “Ololûgê” or triumph-cry, is heard within and then repeated again and again further off in the City. Handmaids and Attendants come from the Palace, bearing torches, with which they kindle incense on the altars. Among them comes CLYTEMNESTRA, who throws herself on her knees at the central Altar in an agony of prayer.]

CHORUS. Ten years since Ilion’s righteous foes, The Atreidae strong, Menelaüs and eke Agamemnon arose, Two thrones, two sceptres, yoked of God; And a thousand galleys of Argos trod The seas for the righting of wrong; And wrath of battle about them cried, As vultures cry, Whose nest is plundered, and up they fly In anguish lonely, eddying wide, Great wings like oars in the waste of sky, Their task gone from them, no more to keep Watch o’er the vulture babes asleep. But One there is who heareth on high Some Pan or Zeus, some lost Apollo— That keen bird-throated suffering cry Of the stranger wronged in God’s own sky; And sendeth down, for the law transgressed, The Wrath of the Feet that follow.

So Zeus the Watcher of Friend and Friend, Zeus who Prevaileth, in after quest For One Belovèd by Many Men On Paris sent the Atreidae twain; Yea, sent him dances before the end For his bridal cheer, Wrestlings heavy and limbs forespent For Greek and Trojan, the knee earth-bent, The bloody dust and the broken spear. He knoweth, that which is here is here, And that which Shall Be followeth near; He seeketh God with a great desire, He heaps his gifts, he essays his pyre With torch below and with oil above, With tears, but never the wrath shall move Of the Altar cold that rejects his fire.

We saw the Avengers go that day, And they left us here; for our flesh is old And serveth not; and these staves uphold A strength like the strength of a child at play. For the sap that springs in the young man’s hand And the valour of age, they have left the land. And the passing old, while the dead leaf blows And the old staff gropeth his three-foot way, Weak as a babe and alone he goes, A dream left wandering in the day.

But thou, O daughter of Tyndareus, Queen Clytemnestra, what need? What news? What tale or tiding hath stirred thy mood To send forth word upon all our ways For incensed worship? Of every god That guards the city, the deep, the high, Gods of the mart, gods of the sky, The altars blaze. One here, one there, To the skyey night the firebrands flare, Drunk with the soft and guileless spell Of balm of kings from the inmost cell. Tell, O Queen, and reject us not, All that can or that may be told, And healer be to this aching thought, Which one time hovereth, evil-cold, And then from the fires thou kindlest Will Hope be kindled, and hungry Care Fall back for a little while, nor tear The heart that beateth below my breast.

It is ours to tell of the Sign of the War-way given, To men more strong, (For a life that is kin unto ours yet breathes from heaven A spell, a Strength of Song:) How the twin-throned Might of Achaia, one Crown divided Above all Greeks that are, With avenging hand and spear upon Troy was guided By the Bird of War. ’Twas a King among birds to each of the Kings of the Sea, One Eagle black, one black but of fire-white tail, By the House, on the Spear-hand, in station that all might see; And they tore a hare, and the life in her womb that grew, Yea, the life unlived and the races unrun they slew. Sorrow, sing sorrow: but good prevail, prevail!

And the War-seer wise, as he looked on the Atreid Yoke Twain-tempered, knew Those fierce hare-renders the lords of his host; and spoke, Reading the omen true. “At the last, the last, this Hunt hunteth Ilion down, Yea, and before the wall Violent division the fulness of land and town Shall waste withal; If only God’s eye gloom not against our gates, And the great War-curb of Troy, fore-smitten, fail. For Pity lives, and those wingèd Hounds she hates, Which tore in the Trembler’s body the unborn beast. And Artemis abhorreth the eagles’ feast.” Sorrow, sing sorrow: but good prevail, prevail!

“Thou beautiful One, thou tender lover Of the dewy breath of the Lion’s child; Thou the delight, through den and cover, Of the young life at the breast of the wild, Yet, oh, fulfill, fulfill The sign of the Eagles’ Kill! Be the vision accepted, albeit horrible…. But I-ê, I-ê! Stay her, O Paian, stay! For lo, upon other evil her heart she setteth, Long wastes of wind, held ship and unventured sea, On, on, till another Shedding of Blood be wrought: They kill but feast not; they pray not; the law is broken; Strife in the flesh, and the bride she obeyeth not, And beyond, beyond, there abideth in wrath reawoken— It plotteth, it haunteth the house, yea, it never forgetteth— Wrath for a child to be.” So Calchas, reading the wayside eagles’ sign, Spake to the Kings, blessings and words of bale; And like his song be thine, Sorrow, sing sorrow: but good prevail, prevail!

One there was who reigned of old, Big with wrath to brave and blast, Lo, his name is no more told! And who followed met at last His Third-thrower, and is gone. Only they whose hearts have known Zeus, the Conqueror and the Friend, They shall win their vision’s end;

Zeus the Guide, who made man turn Thought-ward, Zeus, who did ordain Man by Suffering shall Learn. So the heart of him, again Aching with remembered pain, Bleeds and sleepeth not, until Wisdom comes against his will. ’Tis the gift of One by strife Lifted to the throne of life.

So that day the Elder Lord, Marshal of the Achaian ships, Strove not with the prophet’s word, Bowed him to his fate’s eclipse, When with empty jars and lips Parched and seas impassable Fate on that Greek army fell, Fronting Chalcis as it lay, By Aulis in the swirling bay.

And winds, winds blew from Strymon River, Unharboured, starving, winds of waste endeavour, Man-blinding, pitiless to cord and bulwark, And the waste of days was made long, more long, Till the flower of Argos was aghast and withered; Then through the storm rose the War-seer’s song, And told of medicine that should tame the tempest, But bow the Princes to a direr wrong. Then “Artemis” he whispered, he named the name; And the brother Kings they shook in the hearts of them, And smote on the earth their staves, and the tears came.

But the King, the elder, hath found voice and spoken: “A heavy doom, sure, if God’s will were broken; But to slay mine own child, who my house delighteth, Is that not heavy? That her blood should flow On her father’s hand, hard beside an altar? My path is sorrow wheresoe’er I go. Shall Agamemnon fail his ships and people, And the hosts of Hellas melt as melts the snow? They cry, they thirst, for a death that shall break the spell, For a Virgin’s blood: ’tis a rite of old, men tell. And they burn with longing.—O God may the end be well!”

To the yoke of Must-Be he bowed him slowly, And a strange wind within his bosom tossed, A wind of dark thought, unclean, unholy; And he rose up, daring to the uttermost. For men are boldened by a Blindness, straying Toward base desire, which brings grief hereafter, Yea, and itself is grief; So this man hardened to his own child’s slaying, As help to avenge him for a woman’s laughter And bring his ships relief!

Her “Father, Father,” her sad cry that lingered, Her virgin heart’s breath they held all as naught, Those bronze-clad witnesses and battle-hungered; And there they prayed, and when the prayer was wrought He charged the young men to uplift and bind her, As ye lift a wild kid, high above the altar, Fierce-huddling forward, fallen, clinging sore To the robe that wrapt her; yea, he bids them hinder The sweet mouth’s utterance, the cries that falter, —His curse for evermore!—

With violence and a curb’s voiceless wrath. Her stole of saffron then to the ground she threw, And her eye with an arrow of pity found its path To each man’s heart that slew: A face in a picture, striving amazedly; The little maid who danced at her father’s board, The innocent voice man’s love came never nigh, Who joined to his her little paean-cry When the third cup was poured….

What came thereafter I saw not neither tell. But the craft of Calchas failed not.—’Tis written, He Who Suffereth Shall Learn; the law holdeth well. And that which is to be, Ye will know at last; why weep before the hour? For come it shall, as out of darkness dawn. Only may good from all this evil flower; So prays this Heart of Argos, this frail tower Guarding the land alone.

LEADER. Before thy state, O Queen, I bow mine eyes. ’Tis written, when the man’s throne empty lies, The woman shall be honoured.—Hast thou heard Some tiding sure? Or is it Hope, hath stirred To fire these altars? Dearly though we seek To learn, ’tis thine to speak or not to speak.