Agamemnon
Aeschylus
Aeschylus. The poetical works of Robert Browning, Volume 13. Browning, Robert, translator; Berdoe, Edward, editor. London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1889.
- Justly presageful of a fate behind.
- But I pray — things false, from my hope, may fall
- Into the fate that’s not-fulfilled-at-all!
- Especially at least, of health that’s great
- The term’s insatiable: for, its weight
- — A neighbour, with a common wall between —
- Ever will sickness lean;
- And destiny, her course pursuing straight,
- Has struck man’s ship against a reef unseen.
- Now, when a portion, rather than the treasure,
- Fear casts from sling, with peril in right measure,
- It has not sunk — the universal freight,
- (With misery freighted over-full)
- Nor has fear whelmed the hull.
- Then too the gift of Zeus,
- Two-handedly profuse,
- Even from the furrows’ yield for yearly use
- Has done away with famine, the disease;
- But blood of man to earth once falling-deadly, black —
- In times ere these, —