words are another instance of the double sense which expresses reverence to her husband, but intends the bloody design with which her soul was agitated."[1]
"Men! citizens! Elders of Argos' state!
I blush not in your presence to pour forth
All a wife's fondness for her lord beloved;
For timorous bashfulness soon dies away
Before familiar faces. Not from others
Learning, but only from mine own sad knowledge
Will I describe my solitary life,
While he was far away under Troy's walls."
She describes at great length how she suffered from rumours of her lord's death; how she had three times tried to hang herself; how her eyes had been dried up with weeping, and her short sleep broken by miserable dreams. As Dean Milman says,
"Methinks the lady doth protest too much."
Then she addresses the king in terms of over-artful panegyric:—
"Thou, watchdog of the unattainted fold!
The main-stay that secures the straining ship!
The firm-based pillar, bearing the lofty roof!
The only son to childless father born!
Land by the lost despairing sailor seen!
Day beaming beautiful after fierce storms!
Cool fountain to the thirsty traveller!"
But she will lead him to the pitch of pride, that his fall may be complete: she will make him impious that the gods may be against him.
- ↑ Quoted by Professor Wilson, loc. cit.
