Thus by the gory arm of slaughter falls

The stately ox, and bleeds within the stalls.

But not with me the direful murder ends,

These, these expired! their crime, they were my friends:

Thick as the boars, which some luxurious lord

Kills for the feast, to crown the nuptial board.

When war has thunder’d with its loudest storms,

Death thou hast seen in all her ghastly forms:

In duel met her on the listed ground,

When hand to hand they wound return for wound;

But never have the eyes astonish’d view’d

So vile a deed, so dire a scene of blood.

E’en in the flow of joy, when now the bowl

Glows in our veins, and opens every soul,

We groan, we faint; with blood the doom is dyed.

And o’er the pavement floats the dreadful tide—

Her breast all gore, with lamentable cries,

The bleeding innocent Cassandra dies!

Then though pale death froze cold in every vein,

My sword I strive to wield, but strive in vain;

Nor did my traitress wife these eyelids close,

Or decently in death my limbs compose.

O woman, woman, when to ill thy mind

Is bent, all hell contains no fouler fiend:

And such was mine! who basely plunged her sword

Through the fond bosom where she reign’d adored!

Alas! I hoped the toils of war o’ercome,

To meet soft quiet and repose at home;

Delusive hope! O wife, thy deeds disgrace

The perjured sex, and blacken all the race;

And should posterity one virtuous find,

Name Clytemnestra, they will curse the kind.’


“Oh injured shade (I cried) what mighty woes

To thy imperial race from woman rose!

By woman here thou tread’st this mournful strand,

And Greece by woman lies a desert land.’


“‘Warn’d by my ills beware, (the shade replies,)

Nor trust the sex that is so rarely wise;

When earnest to explore thy secret breast,

Unfold some trifle, but conceal the rest.

But in thy consort cease to fear a foe,

For thee she feels sincerity of woe;

When Troy first bled beneath the Grecian arms,