Clytaemnestra - Agamemnon (Lines 1400-1445) lyrics

Clytaemnestra: I did it all. I don't deny it, no. He had no way to flee or fight his destiny Unwinding the robes from Agamemnon's body, spreading them before the altar where the old men cluster around them, unified as a chorus once again. our never-ending, all embracing net, I cast it wide for the royal haul, I coil him round and round in the wealth, the robes of doom, and then I strike him once, twice, and at each stroke he cries in agony he buckles at the knees and crashes here! And when he's down I add the third, last blow, to the Zeus who saves the dead beneath the ground I send that third blow home in homage like a prayer. So he goes down, and the life is bursting out of him great sprays of blood, and the murderous shower wounds me, dyes me black and I, I revel like the Earth when the spring rains come down, the blessed gifts of god, and the new green spear splits the sheath and rips to birth in glory! So it stands, elders of Argos gathered here. Rejoice if you can rejoice - I glory. And if I'd pour upon his body the libation it deserves, what wine could match my words? It is right and more than right. He flooded the vessel of our proud house with misery, with the vintage of the curse and now he drains the dregs. My lord is home at last. Leader: You appall me, you, your brazen words -exulting over your fallen king. Clytaemnestra: And you, you try me like some desperate woman. My heart is steel, well you know. Praise me, blame me as you choose. It's all one. Here is Agamemnon, my husband made a corpse by this right hand - a masterpiece of Justice. Done is done. Chorus: Woman! - what poison cropped from the soil or strained from the heaving sea, what nursed you, drove you insane? You brave the curse of Greece. You have cut away and flung away and now the people cast you off to exile, broken with our hate. Clytaemnestra: And now you sentence me? -you banish me from the city, curses breathing down my neck? But he -name one charge you brought against him then. He thought no more of it than k**ing a beast, and his flocks were rich, teeming in their fleece, but he sacrificed his own child, our daughter, the agony I laboured into love to charm away the savage winds of Thrace. Didn't the law demand you banish him?