Cassandra

CAPTIVE on a foreign shore,Far from Ilion’s hoary wave,Agamemnon’s bridal slaveSpeaks Futurity no more:Death is busy with her grave.

Thick as water, bursts remoteRound her ears the alien din,While her little sullen chinFills the hollows of her throat:Silent lie her slaughter’d kin.

Once to many a pealing shriek,Lo, from Ilion’s topmost tower,Ilion’s fierce prophetic flowerCried the coming of the Greek!Black in Hades sits the hour.

Eyeing phantoms of the Past,Folded like a prophet’s scroll,In the deep’s long shoreward rollHere she sees the anchor cast:Backward moves her sunless soul.

Chieftains, brethren of her joy,Shades, the white light in their eyesSlanting to her lips, arise,Crowding quick the plains of Troy:Now they tell her not she lies.

O the bliss upon the plains,Where the joining heroes clashedShield and spear, and, unabashed,Challenged with hot chariot-reinsGods!—they glimmer ocean-washed.

Alien voices round the ships,Thick as water, shouting Home.Argives, pale as midnight foam,Wax before her awful lips:White as stars that front the gloom.

Like a torch-flame that by dayUp the daylight twists, and, pale,Catches air in leaps that fail,Crushed by the inveterate ray,Through her shines the Ten-Years’ Tale.

Once to many a pealing shriek,Lo, from Ilion’s topmost tower,Ilion’s fierce prophetic flowerCried the coming of the Greek!Black in Hades sits the hour.

Still upon her sunless soulGleams the narrow hidden spaceForward, where her fiery raceFalters on its ashen goal:Still the Future strikes her face.

See toward the conqueror’s carStep the purple Queen whose hateWraps red-armed her royal mateWith his Asian tempest-star:Now Cassandra views her Fate.

King of men! the blinded hostShout:—she lifts her brooding chin:Glad along the joyous dinSmiles the grand majestic ghost:Clytemnestra leads him in.

Lo, their smoky limbs aloof,Shadowing heaven and the seas,Fates and Furies, tangling Threes,Tear and mix above the roof:Fates and fierce Eumenides.

Is the prophetess with rodsBeaten, that she writhes in air?With the Gods who never spare,Wrestling with the unsparing Gods,Lone, her body struggles there.

Like the snaky torch-flame white,Levelled as aloft it twists,She, her soaring arms, and wristsDrooping, struggles with the light,Helios, bright above all mists!

In his orb she sees the tower,Dusk against its flaming rims,Where of old her wretched limbsTwisted with the stolen power:Ilium all the lustre dims!

O the bliss upon the plains,Where the joining heroes clashedShield and spear, and, unabashed,Challenged with hot chariot-reinsGods!—they glimmer ocean-washed.

Thrice the Sun-god’s name she calls;Shrieks the deed that shames the sky;Like a fountain leaping high,Falling as a fountain falls:Lo, the blazing wheels go by!

Captive on a foreign shore,Far from Ilion’s hoary wave,Agamemnon’s bridal slaveSpeaks Futurity no more:Death is busy with her grave.