Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series
Page 306
Before she has out-frothed her bloody fierceness.
Not I — throwing away more words — will shamed be!
CHOROS.
But I, — for I compassionate, — will chafe not.
Come, O unhappy one, this car vacating,
Yielding to this necessity, prove yoke’s use!
KASSANDRA.
Otototoi, Gods, Earth, —
Apollon, Apollon!
CHOROS.
Why didst thou “ototoi” concerning Loxias?
Since he is none such as to suit a mourner.
KASSANDRA.
Otototoi, Gods, Earth, —
Apollon, Apollon!
CHOROS.
Ill-boding here again the god invokes she
— Nowise empowered in woes to stand by helpful.
KASSANDRA.
Apollon, Apollon,
Guard of the ways, my destroyer!
For thou hast quite, this second time, destroyed me.
CHOROS.
To prophesy she seems of her own evils:
Remains the god-gift to the slave-soul present.
KASSANDRA.
Apollon, Apollon,
Guard of the ways, my destroyer!
Ha, whither hast thou led me? to what roof now?
CHOROS.
To the Atreidai’s roof: if this thou know’st not,
I tell it thee, nor this wilt thou call falsehood.
KASSANDRA.
How! How!
God-hated, then! Of many a crime it knew —
Self-slaying evils, halters too:
Man’s-shambles, blood-besprinkler of the ground!
CHOROS.
She seems to be good-nosed, the stranger: dog-like,
She snuffs indeed the victims she will find there.
KASSANDRA.
How! How!
By the witnesses here I am certain now!
These children bewailing their slaughters — flesh dressed in the fire
And devoured by their sire!
CHOROS.
Ay, we have heard of thy soothsaying glory,
Doubtless: but prophets none are we in scent of!
KASSANDRA.
Ah, gods, what ever does she meditate?
What this new anguish great?
Great in the house here she meditates ill
Such as friends cannot bear, cannot cure it: and still
Off stands all Resistance
Afar in the distance!
CHOROS.
Of these I witless am — these prophesyings.
But those I knew: for the whole city bruits them.
KASSANDRA.
Ah, unhappy one, this thou consummatest?
Thy husband, thy bed’s common guest,
In the bath having brightened. . . How shall I declare
Consummation? It soon will be there:
For hand after hand she outstretches,
At life as she reaches!
CHOROS.
Nor yet I’ve gone with thee! for — after riddles —
Now, in blind oracles, I feel resourceless.
KASSANDRA.
Eh, eh, papai, papai,
What this, I espy?
Some net of Haides undoubtedly
Nay, rather, the snare
Is she who has share
In his bed, who takes part in the murder there!
But may a revolt —
Unceasing assault —
On the Race, raise a shout
Sacrificial, about
A victim — by stoning —
For murder atoning!
CHOROS.
What this Erinus which i’ the house thou callest
To raise her cry? Not me thy word enlightens!
To my heart has run
A drop of the crocus-dye:
Which makes for those
On earth by the spear that lie,
A common close
With life’s descending sun.
Swift is the curse begun!
KASSANDRA.
How! How!
See — see quick!
Keep the bull from the cow!
In the vesture she catching him, strikes him now
With the black-horned trick,
And he falls in the watery vase!
Of the craft-killing cauldron I tell thee the case!
CHOROS.
I would not boast to be a topping critic
Of oracles: but to some sort of evil
I liken these. From oracles, what good speech
To mortals, beside, is sent?
It comes of their evils: these arts word-abounding that sing the event
Bring the fear ‘t is their office to teach.
KASSANDRA.
Ah me, ah me —
Of me unhappy, evil-destined fortunes!
For I bewail my proper woe
As, mine with his, all into one I throw.
Why hast thou hither me unhappy brought?
— Unless that I should die with him — for nought!
What else was sought?
CHOROS.
Thou art some mind-mazed creature, god-possessed:
And all about thyself dost wail
A lay — no lay!
Like some brown nightingale
Insatiable of noise, who — well-away! —
From her unhappy breast
Keeps moaning Itus, Itus, and his life
With evils, flourishing on each side, rife.
KASSANDRA.
Ah me, ah me,
The fate o’ the nightingale, the clear resounder!
For a body wing-borne have the gods cast round her,
And sweet existence, from misfortunes free:
But for myself remains a sundering
With spear, the two-edged thing!
CHOROS.
Whence hast thou this on-rushing god-involving pain
And spasms in vain?
For, things that terrify,
With changing unintelligible cry
Thou strikest up in tune, yet all the while
After that Orthian style!
Whence hast thou limits to the oracular road,
That evils bode?
KASSANDRA.
Ah me, the nuptials, the nuptials of Paris, the deadly to friends!
Ah me, of Skamandros the draught
Paternal! There once, to these ends,
On thy banks was I brought,
The unhappy! And now, by Kokutos and Acheron’s shore
I shall soon be, it seems, these my oracles singing once more!
CHOROS.
Why this word, plain too much,
Hast thou uttered? A babe might learn of such!
I am struck with a bloody bite — here under —
At the fate woe-wreaking
Of thee shrill shrieking:
To me who hear — a wonder!
KASSANDRA.
Ah me, the toils — the toils of the city
The wholly destroyed: ah, pity,
Of the sacrificings my father made
In the ramparts’ aid —
Much slaughter of grass-fed flocks — that afforded no cure
That the city should not, as it does now, the burthen endure!
But I, with the soul on fire,
Soon to the earth shall cast me and expire.
CHOROS.
To things, on the former consequent,
Again hast thou given vent:
And ‘t is some evil-meaning fiend doth move thee,
Heavily falling from above thee,
To melodize thy sorrows — else, in singing,
Calamitous, death-bringing!
And of all this the end
I am without resource to apprehend
KASSANDRA.
Well then, the oracle from veils no longer
Shall be outlooking, like a bride new-married:
But bright it seems, against the sun’s uprisings
Breat
hing, to penetrate thee: so as, wave-like,
To wash against the rays a woe much greater
Than this. I will no longer teach by riddles.
And witness, running with me, that of evils
Done long ago, I nosing track the footstep!
For, this same roof here — never quits a Choros
One-voiced, not well-tuned since no “well” it utters:
And truly having drunk, to get more courage,
Man’s blood — the Komos keeps within the household
— Hard to be sent outside — of sister Furies:
They hymn their hymn — within the house close sitting —
The first beginning curse: in turn spit forth at
The Brother’s bed, to him who spurned it hostile.
Have I missed aught, or hit I like a bowman?
False prophet am I, — knock at doors, a babbler?
Henceforward witness, swearing now, I know not
By other’s word the old sins of this household!
CHOROS.
And how should oath, bond honourably binding,
Become thy cure? No less I wonder at thee
— That thou, beyond sea reared, a strange-tongued city
Shouldst hit in speaking, just as if thou stood’st by!
KASSANDRA.
Prophet Apollon put me in this office.
CHOROS.
What, even though a god, with longing smitten?
KASSANDRA.
At first, indeed, shame was to me to say this.
CHOROS.
For, more relaxed grows everyone who fares well.
KASSANDRA.
But he was athlete to me — huge grace breathing!
CHOROS.
Well, to the work of children, went ye law’s way?
KASSANDRA.
Having consented, I played false to Loxias.
CHOROS.
Already when the wits inspired possessed of?
KASSANDRA.
Already townsmen all their woes I foretold.
CHOROS.
How wast thou then unhurt by Loxias’ anger?
KASSANDRA.
I no one aught persuaded, when I sinned thus.
CHOROS.
To us, at least, now sooth to say thou seemest.
KASSANDRA.
Halloo, halloo, ah, evils!
Again, straightforward foresight’s fearful labour
Whirls me, distracting with prelusive last-lays!
Behold ye those there, in the household seated, —
Young ones, — of dreams approaching to the figures?
Children, as if they died by their beloveds —
Hands they have filled with flesh, the meal domestic —
Entrails and vitals both, most piteous burthen,
Plain they are holding! — which their father tasted!
For this, I say, plans punishment a certain
Lion ignoble, on the bed that wallows,
House-guard (ah, me!) to the returning master
— Mine, since to bear the slavish yoke behoves me!
The ship’s commander, Ilion’s desolator,
Knows not what things the tongue of the lewd she-dog
Speaking, outspreading, shiny-souled, in fashion
Of Até hid, will reach to, by ill fortune!
Such things she dares — the female, the male’s slayer!
She is . . . how calling her the hateful bite-beast
May I hit the mark? Some amphisbaina, — Skulla
Housing in rocks, of mariners the mischief,
Revelling Haides’ mother, — curse, no truce with,
Breathing at friends! How piously she shouted,
The all-courageous, as at turn of battle!
She seems to joy at the back-bringing safety!
Of this, too, if I nought persuade, all’s one! Why?
What is to be will come. And soon thou, present,
“True prophet all too much” wilt pitying style me.
CHOROS.
Thuestes’ feast, indeed, on flesh of children,
I went with, and I shuddered. Fear too holds me
Listing what’s true as life, nowise out-imaged.
KASSANDRA.
I say, thou Agamemnon’s fate shalt look on.
CHOROS.
Speak good words, O unhappy! Set mouth sleeping!
KASSANDRA.
But Paian stands in no stead to the speech here.
CHOROS.
Nay, if the thing be near: but never be it!
KASSANDRA.
Thou, indeed, prayest: they to kill are busy.
CHOROS.
Of what man is it ministered, this sorrow?
KASSANDRA.
There again, wide thou look’st of my foretellings.
CHOROS.
For, the fulfiller’s scheme I have not gone with.
KASSANDRA.
And yet too well I know the speech Hellenic.
CHOROS.
For Puthian oracles, thy speech, and hard too.
KASSANDRA.
Papai: what fire this! and it comes upon me!
Ototoi, Lukeion Apollon, ah me — me!
She, the two-footed lioness that sleeps with
The wolf, in absence of the generous lion,
Kills me the unhappy one: and as a poison
Brewing, to put my price too in the anger,
She vows, against her mate this weapon whetting
To pay him back the bringing me, with slaughter.
Why keep I then these things to make me laughed at,
Both wands and, round my neck, oracular fillets?
Thee, at least, ere my own fate will I ruin:
Go, to perdition falling! Boons exchange we —
Some other Até in my stead make wealthy!
See there — himself, Apollon stripping from me
The oracular garment! having looked upon me
— Even in these adornments, laughed by friends at,
As good as foes, i’ the balance weighed: and vainly —
For, called crazed stroller, — as I had been gipsy,
Beggar, unhappy, starved to death, — I bore it.
And now the Prophet — prophet me undoing,
Has led away to these so deadly fortunes!
Instead of my sire’s altar, waits the hack-block
She struck with first warm bloody sacrificing!
Yet nowise unavenged of gods will death be:
For there shall come another, our avenger,
The mother-slaying scion, father’s doomsman:
Fugitive, wanderer, from this land an exile,
Back shall he come, — for friends, copestone these curses!
For there is sworn a great oath from the gods that
Him shall bring hither his fallen sire’s prostration.
Why make I then, like an indweller, moaning?
Since at the first I foresaw Ilion’s city
Suffering as it has suffered: and who took it,
Thus by the judgment of the gods are faring.
I go, will suffer, will submit to dying!
But, Haides’ gates — these same I call, I speak to,
And pray that on an opportune blow chancing,
Without a struggle, — blood the calm death bringing
In easy outflow, — I this eye may close up!
CHOROS.
O much unhappy, but, again, much learned
Woman, long hast thou outstretched! But if truly
Thou knowest thine own fate, how comes that, like to
A god-led steer, to altar bold thou treadest?
KASSANDRA.
There’s no avodiance, — strangers, no some time more!
CHOROS.
He last is, anyhow, by time advantaged.
KASSANDRA.
It comes, the day: I shall by flight gain little.
CHOROS.
But know thou patient art from thy brave spirit!
K
ASSANDRA.
Such things hears no one of the happy-fortuned.
CHOROS.
But gloriously to die — for man is grace, sure.
KASSANDRA.
Ah, sire, for thee and for thy noble children!
CHOROS.
But what thing is it? What fear turns thee backwards?
KASSANDRA.
Alas, alas!
CHOROS.
Why this “Alas!” if ‘t is no spirit’s loathing?
KASSANDRA.
Slaughter blood-dripping does the household smell of!
CHOROS.
How else? This scent is of hearth-sacrifices.
KASSANDRA.
Such kind of steam as from a tomb is proper!
CHOROS.
No Surian honour to the House thou speak’st of!
KASSANDRA.
But I will go, — even in the household wailing
My fate and Agamemnon’s. Life suffice me!
Ah, strangers!
I cry not “ah” — as bird at bush — through terror
Idly! to me, the dead this much bear witness:
When, for me — woman, there shall die a woman,
And, for a man ill-wived, a man shall perish!
This hospitality I ask as dying.
CHOROS.
O sufferer, thee — thy foretold fate I pity.
KASSANDRA.
Yet once for all, to speak a speech, I fain am:
No dirge, mine for myself! The sun I pray to,
Fronting his last light! — to my own avengers —
That from my hateful slayers they exact too
Pay for the dead slave — easy-managed hand’s work!
CHOROS.
Alas for mortal matters! Happy-fortuned, —
Why, any shade would turn them: if unhappy,
By throws the wetting sponge has spoiled the picture!
And more by much in mortals this I pity.
The being well-to-do —
Insatiate a desire of this
Born with all mortals is,
Nor any is there who
Well-being forces off, aroints
From roofs whereat a finger points,
“No more come in!” exclaiming. This man, too,
To take the city of Priamos did the celestials give,
And, honoured by the god, he homeward comes;
But now if, of the former, he shall pay
The blood back, and, for those who ceased to live,
Dying, for deaths in turn new punishment he dooms —
Who, being mortal, would not pray
With an unmischievous
Daimon to have been born — who would not, hearing thus?
AGAMEMNON.
Ah me! I am struck — a right-aimed stroke within me!
CHOROS.
Silence! Who is it shouts “stroke” — ”right-aimedly” a wounded one?
AGAMEMNON.
Ah me! indeed again, — a second, struck by!
CHOROS.
This work seems to me completed by this “Ah me” of the king’s;
But we somehow may together share in solid counsellings.