Page:Agamemnon (1877) Browning.djvu/124

108 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!