Clytaemnestra - Agamemnon (Lines 1436-1475) lyrics

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? hunt him from the land for all his guilt? But now you witness what I've done and you are ruthless judges. Threaten away! I'll meet you blow for blow. And if I fall the throne is yours. If god decrees the reverse, late as it is, old men, you'll learn your place. Chorus: Mad with ambition, shrilling pride! - some Fury crazed with the carnage rages through your brain - I can see the flecks of blood inflame your eyes! But vengeance comes - you'll lose your loved ones, stroke for painful stroke. Clytaemnestra: Then learn this, too, the power of my oaths. By the child's Rights I brought to birth, by Ruin, by Fury - the three gods to whom I sacrificed this man - I swear my hopes will never walk the halls of fear so long as Aegisthus lights the fire on my hearth. Loyal to me as always, no small shield to bu*tress my defiance. Here he lies. He brutalized me. The darling of all the golden girls who spread the gates of Troy. And here his spear-prize ... what wonders she beheld! -the seer of Apollo shared my husband's bed, his faithful mate who knelt at the rowing-benches, worked by every hand. They have their rewards. He as you know. And she, the swan of the gods who lived to sing her latest, dying song -his lover lies beside him. She brings a fresh, voluptuous relish to my bed!