back
Agamemnon, 3rd stasimon, 975-1000
click on Greek text to hear it recited; scroll down for translation
Why ever so persistently
does this overwatching dread
keep hovering about my visionary heart?
While prophecies chant me their unbidden, unpaid tune?
Nor yet to spurn it away from me
as though it were some murky dream
does confidence sit persuasively
upon my spirit’s throne? Though time
has gathered around the ropes
to ships’ sterns the sands
of a shore they were cast upon
when the seaborne army
started out for Ilium.
My eyes can vouch for his return:
I myself have witnessed it.
Yet still goes up this lyreless minstrelling,
wailing of a Fury, self-taught to the soul within me,
a soul that finds scarce
all its old confidence of hope.
My vitals are not senseless
in this clamor of my heart
that rouses churnings of fulfillment
within my righteous gut.
Still, I pray that my expectancy
yield only what is false,
falling to unfulfillment.
translation © 2003 Alan Shaw
back