Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/266

POEMS OF GREECE By his last beam, that my detested foes

May pay no less to them who shall avenge me,

Than I who die an unresisting slave! (She enters the palace.)

CHORUS. Of Fortune was never yet enow

To mortal man; and no one ever

Her presence from his house would sever

And point, and say, "Come no more nigh!"

Unto our King granted the Gods on high

That Priam's towers should bow,

And homeward, crowned of Heaven, hath he come;

But now if, for the ancestral blood that lay

At his doors, he falls,—and the dead, that cursed his home,

He, dying, must in full requite,—

What manner of man is one that would not pray

To be born with a good attendant Sprite? (An outcry within the palace.)

AGAMEMNON. Woe's me! I am stricken a deadly blow within!

CHORUS. Hark! Who is 't cries "a blow"? Who meets his death?

AGAMEMNON. Woe's me! again! a second time I am stricken!

CHORUS. The deed, methinks, from the King's cry, is done.

Quick, let us see what help may be in counsel!

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