GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS
the foregoing speech appeared again in literature until Shakespeare wrote:
Infirm of purpose!
Give me the daggers: the sleeping and the dead
Are but as pictures: 'tis the eye of childhood
That fears a painted devil. * * * *
My hands are of your color; but I shame
To wear a heart so white!
I will omit the greater portion of the choruses and dialogue which follow the Queen's avowal, but translate a few of the strophes and antistrophes alluding to the evil auspices of the Atreidæ and to the sacrifice of Iphigeneia:
[Agam. 1466-1507.]
CHORUS—SEMI-CHORUS—KLYTÆMNESTRA
Chorus.Woe! Woe!
King! O how shall I weep for thy dying?
What shall my fond heart say anew?
Thou in the web of the spider art lying,
Breathing out life by a death she shall rue!
Semi-Chorus.—Alas! alas for this slavish couch! By a sword
Two-edged, by a hand untrue,
Thou art smitten, even to death, my lord!
Klyt.—Thou sayest this deed was mine alone;
But I bid thee call me not
The wife of Agamemnon's bed;
'Twas the ancient fell Alastor[1] of Atreus' throne,
- ↑ The Evil Genius, the Avenger.
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