At this point the herald is suddenly roused to reply. He turns upon her furiously for her ominous forebodings and bids her be silent. If he did not know her for a mad woman, he says, she should suffer for boding thus evil to the Greeks. He orders her roughly to follow him; but at his speech the frenzy rushes over Cassandra again. She turns upon Talthybius in magnificent anger and scorn. “How fierce a slave,” she cries; and then the prophetic gift burns in her as she foretells in language of awful beauty her own doom and that of Agamemnon.
“Thou Greek King,
Who deem’st thy fortune now so high a thing,
Thou dust of the earth, a lowlier bed I see,
In darkness, not in light, awaiting thee;
And with thee, with thee ... there, where yawneth plain
A rift of the hills, raging with winter rain,
Dead ... and outcast ... and naked.... It is I
Beside my bridegroom; and the wild beasts cry,
And ravin on God’s chosen!...