Page:House of Atreus 2nd ed (1889).djvu/74

38 That all which now is well may so abide:

For that which haply needs the healer's art,

That will we medicine, discerning well

If cautery or knife befit the time.

Now, to my palace and the shrines of home,

I will pass in, and greet ye first and fair,

Ye gods, who bade me forth, and home again—

And long may Victory tarry in my train!

[''Enter Clytemnestra, followed by maidens bearing purple robes''.

Old men of Argos, lieges of our realm,

Shame shall not bid me shrink lest ye should see

The love I bear my lord. Such blushing fear

Dies at the last from hearts of human kind.

From mine own soul and from no alien lips,

I know and will reveal the life I bore,

Reluctant, through the lingering livelong years,

The while my lord beleaguered Ilion's wall.

First that a wife sat sundered from her lord,

In widowed solitude, was utter woe—

And woe, to hear how rumour's many tongues

All boded evil—woe, when he who came

And he who followed spake of ill on ill,

Keening Lost, lost, all lost! thro' hall and bower.

Had this my husband met so many wounds,

As by a thousand channels rumour told,

No network e'er was full of holes as he.

Had he been slain, as oft as tidings came

That he was dead, he well might boast him now

A second Geryon of triple frame,