Robert Fagles - Agamamnon (Lines 1509-1558) lyrics

CHORUS: The great curse of the house, the spirit, dead weight wrath - and you can praise it! 1510 Praise the insatiate doom that feeds relentless on our future and our sons. Oh all through the will of Zeus, the cause of all, the one who works it all. What comes to birth that is not Zeus? 1515 Our lives are pain, what part not come from god? Oh my king, my captain, how to salute you, how to mourn you? What can I say with all my warmth and love? Here in the black widow's web you lie, 1520 gasping out your life in a sacrilegious d**h, dear god, reduced to a slave's bed, my king of men, yoked by stealth and Fate, by the wife's hand that thrust the two-edged sword. 1525 CLYTAEMNESTRA: You claim the work is mine, call me Agamemnon's wife - you are so wrong. Fleshed in the wife of this dead man, the spirit lives within me, our savage ancient spirit of revenge. 1530 In return for Atreus' brutal feast he k**s his perfect son - for every murdered child, a crowning sacrifice. CHORUS: And you, innocent of his murder? And who could swear to that? and how?... 1535 and still an avenger could arise, bred by fathers' crimes, and lend a hand. He wades in the blood of brothers, stream on the mounting stream - black war erupts and where he strides revenge will stride, 1540 clots will ma** for the young who were devoured. Oh my king, my captain, how to salute you, how to mourn you? What can I say with all my warmth and love? Here in the black widow's web you lie, 1545 gasping out your life in a sacrilegious d**h, dear god, reduced to a slave's bed, my king of men, yoked by stealth and Fate, by the wife's hand that thrust the two-edged sword. 1550 CLYTEMNAESTRA: No slave's d**h, I think- no stealthier than the d**h he dealt our house and the offspring of our loins, Iphigeneia, girl of tears. Act for act, wound for wound! 1555 Never exult Hades, swordsman, here you are repaid. By the sword you did your work and by the sword you die.