The Agamemnon of Aeschylus Part 5

I know not how to speak false words of weal For friends to reap thereof a harvest true.

LEADER.

Canst speak of truth with comfort joined? Those two Once parted, 'tis a gulf not lightly crossed.

HERALD.

Your king is vanished from the Achaian host, He and his ship! Such comfort have I brought.

LEADER.

Sailed he alone from Troy? Or was he caught By storms in the midst of you, and swept away?

HERALD.

Thou hast hit the truth; good marksman, as men say!

And long to suffer is but brief to tell.

LEADER.

How ran the sailors' talk? Did there prevail One rumour, showing him alive or dead?

HERALD.

None knoweth, none hath tiding, save the head Of Helios, ward and watcher of the world.

LEADER.

Then tell us of the storm. How, when G.o.d hurled His anger, did it rise? How did it die?

HERALD.

It likes me not, a day of presage high With dolorous tongue to stain. Those twain, I vow, Stand best apart. When one with shuddering brow, From armies lost, back beareth to his home Word that the terror of her prayers is come; One wound in her great heart, and many a fate For many a home of men cast out to sate The two-fold scourge that worketh Ares' l.u.s.t, Spear crossed with spear, dust wed with b.l.o.o.d.y dust; Who walketh laden with such weight of wrong, Why, let him, if he will, uplift the song That is h.e.l.l's triumph. But to come as I Am now come, laden with deliverance high, Home to a land of peace and laughing eyes, And mar all with that fury of the skies Which made our Greeks curse G.o.d--how should this be?

Two enemies most ancient, Fire and Sea, A sudden friendship swore, and proved their plight By war on us poor sailors through that night Of misery, when the horror of the wave Towered over us, and winds from Strymon drave Hull against hull, till good ships, by the horn Of the mad whirlwind gored and overborne, One here, one there, 'mid rain and blinding spray, Like sheep by a devil herded, pa.s.sed away.

And when the blessed Sun upraised his head, We saw the Aegean waste a-foam with dead, Dead men, dead ships, and spars disasterful.

Howbeit for us, our one unwounded hull Out of that wrath was stolen or begged free By some good spirit--sure no man was he!-- Who guided clear our helm; and on till now Hath Saviour Fortune throned her on the prow.

No surge to mar our mooring, and no floor Of rock to tear us when we made for sh.o.r.e.

Till, fled from that sea-h.e.l.l, with the clear sun Above us and all trust in fortune gone, We drove like sheep about our brain the thoughts Of that lost army, broken and scourged with knouts Of evil. And, methinks, if there is breath In them, they talk of us as gone to death-- How else?--and so say we of them! For thee, Since Menelaus thy first care must be, If by some word of Zeus, who wills not yet To leave the old house for ever desolate, Some ray of sunlight on a far-off sea Lights him, yet green and living ... we may see His ship some day in the harbour!--'Twas the word Of truth ye asked me for, and truth ye have heard!

[_Exit_ HERALD. _The_ CHORUS _take position for the Third Stasimon_.

CHORUS.

(_Surely there was mystic meaning in the name_ HELENA, _meaning which was fulfilled when she fled to Troy._)

Who was He who found for thee That name, truthful utterly-- Was it One beyond our vision Moving sure in pre-decision Of man's doom his mystic lips?-- Calling thee, the Battle-wed, Thee, the Strife-encompa.s.sed, HELEN? Yea, in fate's derision, h.e.l.l in cities, h.e.l.l in ships, h.e.l.l in hearts of men they knew her, When the dim and delicate fold Of her curtains backward rolled, And to sea, to sea, she threw her In the West Wind's giant hold; And with spear and sword behind her Came the hunters in a flood, Down the oarblade's viewless trail Tracking, till in Simos' vale Through the leaves they crept to find her, A Wrath, a seed of blood.

(_The Trojans welcomed her with triumph and praised Alexander till at last their song changed and they saw another meaning in Alexander's name also._)

So the Name to Ilion came On G.o.d's thought-fulfilling flame, She a vengeance and a token Of the unfaith to bread broken, Of the hearth of G.o.d betrayed, Against them whose voices swelled Glorying in the prize they held And the Spoiler's vaunt outspoken And the song his brethren made 'Mid the bridal torches burning; Till, behold, the ancient City Of King Priam turned, and turning Took a new song for her learning, A song changed and full of pity, With the cry of a lost nation; And she changed the bridegroom's name: Called him Paris Ghastly-wed; For her sons were with the dead, And her life one lamentation, 'Mid blood and burning flame.

(_Like a lion's whelp reared as a pet and turning afterwards to a great beast of prey,_)

Lo, once there was a herdsman reared In his own house, so stories tell, A lion's whelp, a milk-fed thing And soft in life's first opening Among the sucklings of the herd; The happy children loved him well, And old men smiled, and oft, they say, In men's arms, like a babe, he lay, Bright-eyed, and toward the hand that teased him Eagerly fawning for food or play.

Then on a day outflashed the sudden Rage of the lion brood of yore; He paid his debt to them that fed With wrack of herds and carnage red, Yea, wrought him a great feast unbidden, Till all the house-ways ran with gore; A sight the thralls fled weeping from, A great red slayer, beard a-foam, High-priest of some blood-cursed altar G.o.d had uplifted against that home.

(_So was it with Helen in Troy._)

And how shall I call the thing that came At the first hour to Ilion city?

Call it a dream of peace untold, A secret joy in a mist of gold, A woman's eye that was soft, like flame, A flower which ate a man's heart with pity.

But she swerved aside and wrought to her kiss a bitter ending, And a wrath was on her harbouring, a wrath upon her friending, When to Priam and his sons she fled quickly o'er the deep, With the G.o.d to whom she sinned for her watcher on the wind, A death-bride, whom brides long shall weep.

(_Men say that Good Fortune wakes the envy of G.o.d; not so; Good Fortune may be innocent, and then there is no vengeance_.)

A grey word liveth, from the morn Of old time among mortals spoken, That man's Wealth waxen full shall fall Not childless, but get sons withal; And ever of great bliss is born A tear unstanched and a heart broken.

But I hold my thought alone and by others unbeguiled; 'Tis the deed that is unholy shall have issue, child on child, Sin on sin, like his begetters; and they shall be as they were.

But the man who walketh straight, and the house thereof, tho' Fate Exalt him, the children shall be fair.

_(It is Sin, it is Pride and Ruthlessness, that beget children like themselves till Justice is fulfilled upon them.)_

But Old Sin loves, when comes the hour again, To bring forth New, Which laugheth l.u.s.ty amid the tears of men; Yea, and Unruth, his comrade, wherewith none May plead nor strive, which dareth on and on, Knowing not fear nor any holy thing; Two fires of darkness in a house, born true, Like to their ancient spring.

But Justice shineth in a house low-wrought With smoke-stained wall, And honoureth him who filleth his own lot; But the unclean hand upon the golden stair With eyes averse she flieth, seeking where Things innocent are; and, recking not the power Of wealth by man misgloried, guideth all To her own destined hour.

[_Here amid a great procession enter_ AGAMEMNON _on a Chariot. Behind him on another Chariot is_ Ca.s.sANDRA. _The_ CHORUS _approach and make obeisance. Some of_ AGAMEMNON'S _men have on their shields a White Horse, some a Lion. Their arms are rich and partly barbaric_.

LEADER.

All hail, O King! Hail, Atreus' Son!

Sacker of Cities! Ilion's bane!

With what high word shall I greet thee again, How give thee worship, and neither outrun The point of pleasure, nor stint too soon?

For many will cling. To fair seeming The faster because they have sinned erewhile; And a man may sigh with never a sting Of grief in his heart, and a man may smile With eyes unlit and a lip that strains.

But the wise Shepherd knoweth his sheep, And his eyes pierce deep The faith like water that fawns and feigns.

But I hide nothing, O King. That day When in quest of Helen our battle array Hurled forth, thy name upon my heart's scroll Was deep in letters of discord writ; And the ship of thy soul, Ill-helmed and blindly steered was it, Pursuing ever, through men that die, One wild heart that was fain to fly.

But on this new day, From the deep of my thought and in love, I say "Sweet is a grief well ended;"

And in time's flow Thou wilt learn and know The true from the false, Of them that were left to guard the walls Of thine empty Hall unfriended.

[_During the above_ CLYTEMNESTRA _has appeared on the Palace steps, with a train of Attendants, to receive her Husband_.

AGAMEMNON.

To Argos and the G.o.ds of Argolis All hail, who share with me the glory of this Home-coming and the vengeance I did wreak On Priam's City! Yea, though none should speak, The great G.o.ds heard our cause, and in one mood Uprising, in the urn of bitter blood, That men should shriek and die and towers should burn, Cast their great vote; while over Mercy's urn Hope waved her empty hands and nothing fell.

Even now in smoke that City tells her tale; The wrack-wind liveth, and where Ilion died The reek of the old fatness of her pride From hot and writhing ashes rolls afar.

For which let thanks, wide as our glories are, Be uplifted; seeing the Beast of Argos hath Round Ilion's towers piled high his fence of wrath And, for one woman ravished, wrecked by force A City. Lo, the leap of the wild Horse in darkness when the Pleiades were dead; A mailed mult.i.tude, a Lion unfed, Which leapt the tower and lapt the blood of Kings!