Woe! woe! ill-omened praise of Fate, 1460
Baneful and still unsatisfied!
Alas! 'Tis Zeus, in will, in deed,
Sole cause, sole fashioner; for say
What comes to mortals undecreed
By Zeus, what here, that owneth not his sway?
Strophe VI.
Woe! woe!
King! King! how thee shall I bewail?
How voice my heartfelt grief? Thou liest there
Entangled in the spider's guileful snare;
In impious death thy life thou dost exhale. 1470
Strophe VII.
Ah me! ah me! to death betrayed,
Sped by the two-edged blade,
On servile couch now ignominious laid.
Clytemnestra. Strophe VIII.
Dost boast as mine this deed?
Then wrongly thou dost read,
†To count me Agamemnon's wife;—not so;
Appearing in the mien
Of this dead monarch's queen,
The ancient fiend of Atreus dealt the blow;—
Requiting his grim feast, 1480
For the slain babes, as priest,
The full-grown victim now he layeth low.
