Agamemnon

Aeschylus

Aeschylus. The poetical works of Robert Browning, Volume 13. Browning, Robert, translator; Berdoe, Edward, editor. London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1889.

  1. And now the Prophet — prophet me undoing,
  2. Has led away to these so deadly fortunes!
  3. Instead of my sire’s altar, waits the hack-block
  4. She struck with first warm bloody sacrificing!
  5. Yet nowise unavenged of gods will death be:
  6. For there shall come another, our avenger,
  7. The mother-slaying scion, father’s doomsman:
  8. Fugitive, wanderer, from this land an exile,
  9. Back shall he come, — for friends, copestone these curses!
  10. For there is sworn a great oath from the gods that
  11. Him shall bring hither his fallen sire’s prostration.
  12. Why make I then, like an indweller, moaning?
  13. Since at the first I foresaw Ilion’s city
  14. Suffering as it has suffered: and who took it,
  15. Thus by the judgment of the gods are faring.
  16. I go, will suffer, will submit to dying!
  17. But, Haides’ gates — these same I call, I speak to,
  18. And pray that on an opportune blow chancing,
  19. Without a struggle, — blood the calm death bringing
  20. In easy outflow, — I this eye may close up!