Wedding of the Sisters
Grim with menace, and read the far-famed oracular surface.
Upright for long she stood, but slowly sank more together,
Anxiously groping about with her fingers over her kirtle,
Staring with fixed, keen gaze at the fiery star-script. In horror
Trembling, she sank on her knees. Her chin and cheek were sunk forward
Deep in the mirroring water. In dumb desperation she clenched her
Teeth on the edge of the shimmering bowl, and fell with an outcry
Vehemently back, while she dragged the bowl along in her falling;
Drenched with the sacred water, she lay a-swoon in the courtyard.
Forward the high priest hurried, he seized the hands of his brothers
Warmly, nor did his attire, that shone with jeweled adornments,
Gleam more brilliantly now than his eyes all radiant with rapture.
Nodding, he shouted aloud, as amid the flutes thrown aside there,
Fans, too, and trampled goblets, he went his way through the courtyard:
"Thine was the sinner's name, thine own, oh Bent-Amenemma!
Upright for long she stood, but slowly sank more together,
Anxiously groping about with her fingers over her kirtle,
Staring with fixed, keen gaze at the fiery star-script. In horror
Trembling, she sank on her knees. Her chin and cheek were sunk forward
Deep in the mirroring water. In dumb desperation she clenched her
Teeth on the edge of the shimmering bowl, and fell with an outcry
Vehemently back, while she dragged the bowl along in her falling;
Drenched with the sacred water, she lay a-swoon in the courtyard.
Forward the high priest hurried, he seized the hands of his brothers
Warmly, nor did his attire, that shone with jeweled adornments,
Gleam more brilliantly now than his eyes all radiant with rapture.
Nodding, he shouted aloud, as amid the flutes thrown aside there,
Fans, too, and trampled goblets, he went his way through the courtyard:
"Thine was the sinner's name, thine own, oh Bent-Amenemma!
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