Page:Agamemnon (1877) Browning.djvu/155

Rh Atreus, soul-keenly more than kindly,—seeming

To joyous hold a flesh-day,—to my father

Served up a meal, the flesh of his own children.

The feet indeed and the hands' top divisions

He hid, high up and isolated sitting:

But, their unshowing parts in ignorance taking,

He forthwith eats food—as thou seest—perdition

To the race: and then, 'ware of the deed ill-omened,

He shrieked O!—falls back, vomiting, from the carnage,

And fate on the Pelopidai past bearing

He prays down—putting in his curse together

The kicking down o' the feast—that so might perish

The race of Pleisthenes entire: and thence is

That it is given thee to see this man prostrate.

And I was rightly of this slaughter stitch-man: