Page:Genius, and other essays.djvu/257

TREASURE TOMBS AT MYKENÆ So that he could not flee nor ward off doom.

A seamless net, as round a fish, I cast

About him, yea, a deadly wealth of robe;

Then smote him twice; and with a double cry

He loosed his limbs; and to him fallen I gave

Yet a third thrust, a grace to Hades, lord

Of the underworld and guardian of the dead.

So, falling, out he gasps his soul, and out

He spurts a sudden jet of blood, that smites

Me with a sable rain of gory dew,—

Me, then no less exulting than the field

In the sky's gift, while bursts the pregnant ear!

Things being thus, old men of Argos, joy,

If joy ye can;—I glory in the deed!

And if 'twere seemly ever yet to pour

Libation to the dead, 'twere most so now;

Most meet that one, who poured for his own home

A cup of ills, returning, thus should drain it!

Chor.—Shame on thy tongue! how bold of mouth thou art

That vauntest such a speech above thy husband!

Klyt.—Ye try me as a woman loose of soul;

But I with dauntless heart avow to you

Well knowing—and whether ye choose to praise or blame

I care not—this is Agamemnon; yea,

My husband; yea, a corpse, of this right hand,

This craftsman sure, the handiwork! Thus stands it.

The third thrust, given by the Queen, to make the murder sure, or, as she puts it, "as a votive offering to Hades," is an act in strong contrast to the timorous course pursued by the Klytæmnestra of Homer—who has not wholly unsexed herself, but flees in terror from the corpse-strewn banquet hall. Æschylos drew the prototype of Lady Macbeth, and nothing equal to [243]