A Table, and a Banquet.
Atr. Come, brother, sit.
Thy. May not Philisthenes
Sit with us, Sir?
Atr. He waits upon the Bride.
A deeper bowl. This to the Bridegroom’s health.
Thy. This to the Gods for this most joyful day.—
Now to the Bridegroom’s health.
Atr. This day shall be
To Argos an eternal festival.
Thy. Fortune and I to day both try our strengths.
I have quite tired her left hand Misery;
She now relieves it with her right-hand Joy,
Which she lays on me with her utmost force;
But both shall be too weak for my strong spirit.
Atr. (aside). So, now my engines of delight have screw’d
The monster to the top of arrogance;
And now he’s ready for his deadly fall.
Thy. O these extremes of misery and joy
Measure the vast extent of a man’s soul.
My spirit reaches Fortune’s East and West.
She has oft set and ris’n here; yet cannot get
Out of the vast dominion of my mind.—
Ho! my proud vaunting has a sudden check;
See, from my head my crown of roses falls;
My hair, tho’ almost drown’d beneath sweet oils,
With strange and sudden horrors starts upright:
Something I know not what bids me not eat;
And what I have devour’d[469] within me groans;
I fain would tear my breast to set it free;—
And I have catch’d the eager thirst of tears,
Which all weak spirits have in misery.
I, who in banishment ne’er wept, weep now.
Atr. Brother, regard it not; ’tis fancy all.
Misery, like night, is haunted with ill spirits,
And spirits leave not easily their haunts;
’Tis said, sometimes they’ll impudently stand
A flight of beams from the forlorn of day,
And scorn the crowing of the sprightly cocks:—
Brother, ’tis morning with our pleasure yet.
Nor has the sprightly wine crow’d oft enough.
See in great flagons at full length it sleeps,
And lets these melancholy thoughts break in
Upon our weaker pleasures. Rouse the wine,
And bid him chase these fancies hence for shame.
Fill up that reverend unvanquish’d Bowl,
Who many a giant in his time has fallen,
And many a monster; Hercules not more.
Thy. If he descends into my groaning breast,
Like Hercules, he will descend to hell—
Atr. And he will vanquish all the monsters there.
Brother, your courage with this Hero try;
He o’er our House has reign’d two hundred years,
And he’s the only king shall rule you here.
Thy. What ails me, I cannot heave it to my lips?
Atr. What, is the bowl too heavy?
Thy. No; my heart.
Atr. The wine will lighten it.
Thy. The wine will not
Come near my lips.
Atr. Why should they be so strange?
They are near a-kin.
Thy. A-kin?
Atr. As possible; father and son not nearer.
Thy. What do you mean?
Atr. Does not good wine beget good blood?
Thy. ’Tis true.
Atr. Your lips then and the wine may be a-kin.
Off with your kindred wine; leave not a drop
To die alone, bewilder’d in that bowl.
Help him to heave it to his head; that’s well.
(Thyestes drinks. A clap of thunder. The lights go out.)
Thy. What pond’rous crimes pull heav’n upon our heads?
Nature is choak’d with some vast villainy,
And all her face is black.
Atr. Some lights, some lights.
Thy. The sky is stunn’d, and reels ’twixt night and day;
Old Chaos is return’d.
Atr. It is to see
A young One born, more dreadful than herself;
That promises great comfort to her age,
And to restore her empire.
Thy. What do you mean?
Atr. Confusion I have in thy bowels made.
Thy. Dire thoughts, like Furies, break into my mind
With flaming brands, and shew me what he means.
Where is Philisthenes?
Atr. Ask thy own bowels:
Thou heard’st them groan; perhaps they now will speak.
Thy. Thou hast not, Tyrant—what I dare not ask?
Atr. I kill’d thy Son, and thou hast drunk his blood.
C. L.
[467] The descendants of Tantalus.
[468] A hint of the dreadful banquet which he meditates, at which the Sun is said to have turned away his horses.
[469] The mangled limbs of his son Philisthenes, which Atreus has set before him.