That all which now is well may so abide:
For that which haply needs the healer's art,
That will we medicine, discerning well
If cautery or knife befit the time.

Now, to my palace and the shrines of home,
I will pass in, and greet you first and fair,
Ye gods, who bade me forth, and home again--
And long may Victory tarry in my train!

[_Enter Clytemnestra, followed by maidens bearing purple robes._

CLYTEMNESTRA

Old men of Argos, lieges of our realm,
Shame shall not bid me shrink lest ye should see
The love I bear my lord. Such blushing fear
Dies at the last from hearts of human kind.
From mine own soul and from no alien lips,
I know and will reveal the life I bore,
Reluctant, through the lingering livelong years,
The while my lord beleaguered Ilion's wall.

First, that a wife sat sundered from her lord,
In widowed solitude, was utter woe--
And woe, to hear how rumour's many tongues
All boded evil--woe, when he who came
And he who followed spake of ill on ill,
Keening _Lost, lost, all lost!_ thro' hail and bower.
Had this my husband met so many wounds,