No More Learning

CHORUS

She grows presageful of her woes to come,
Slave tho' she be, instinct with prophecy.

CASSANDRA

Apollo, Apollo!
God of all ways, but only Death's to me,
O thou Apollo, thou Destroyer named!
What way hast led me, to what evil home?

CHORUS

Know'st thou it not? The home of Atreus' race:
Take these my words for sooth and ask no more.

CASSANDRA

Home cursed of God! Bear witness unto me,
Ye visioned woes within--
The blood-stained hands of them that smite their kin--
The strangling noose, and, spattered o'er
With human blood, the reeking floor!

CHORUS

How like a sleuth-hound questing on the track,
Keen-scented unto blood and death she hies!

CASSANDRA

Ah! can the ghostly guidance fail,
Whereby my prophet-soul is onwards led?
Look! for their flesh the spectre-children wail,
Their sodden limbs on which their father fed!

CHORUS

Long since we knew of thy prophetic fame,--
But for those deeds we seek no prophet's tongue.

CASSANDRA

God!
'tis another crime--
Worse than the storied woe of olden time,
Cureless abhorred, that one is plotting here--
A shaming death, for those that should be dear!
Alas! and far away, in foreign land,
He that should help doth stand!

CHORUS

I knew th' old tales, the city rings withal--
But now thy speech is dark, beyond my ken.

CASSANDRA

O wretch, O purpose fell!
Thou for thy wedded lord
The cleansing wave hast poured--
A treacherous welcome!
How the sequel tell?
Too soon 'twill come, too soon, for now, even now,
She smites him, blow on blow!

CHORUS

Riddles beyond my rede--I peer in vain
Thro' the dim films that screen the prophecy.

CASSANDRA

God! a new sight! a net, a snare of hell,
Set by her hand--herself a snare more fell!
A wedded wife, she slays her lord,
Helped by another hand!
Ye powers, whose hate
Of Atreus' home no blood can satiate,
Raise the wild cry above the sacrifice abhorred!

CHORUS

Why biddest thou some fiend, I know not whom,
Shriek o'er the house? Thine is no cheering word.