Came rushing; even the birds fell dead around us.
Or summer heats, when on his mid-day couch
Heavily fell the waveless sea, no breath
Stirring the sultry air. Why grieve we now?
All is gone by! the toils all o'er! the dead!
No thought have they of rising from their graves.
Why count the suffrages of those who have fallen?
The living only, fickle fortune's wrath
Afflicts with grief. I to calamity
Have bid a long farewell. Of the Argive host
To us, the few survivors, our rich gains
Weigh down in the scale our poor uncounted losses.
In the face of the noon-day sun we make our boast,
Flying abroad over the sea and land,
That now the Argive host hath taken Troy;
And in the ancestral temples of their Gods
Hath nailed the spoils for our eternal glory."
Clytemnestra now comes forward with expressions of exuberant delight; but she never quite hides from us, who are in the secret, the true purpose of her relentless heart. "What day," she cries, "so bright, so blessed, as when the wife greets her returning husband! Throw wide the gates of welcome go and meet him, and tell him that his wife is waiting for him, unchanged and unchangeable! No pleasure have I known but the thought of him, and have watched, like a faithful guardian, over his treasures and his honours." She retires. All has now been done to raise our expectation for the arrival of the king. He is to come at the height of his triumph, and his wife wall greet him with enthusiastic welcome. So now the undertone of sorrow is heard again. The herald tells of storms that have harassed
