No shrill flutes didst thou assign.

Wretch! a foe to all delight.

F’en the slumbers soft of night

Thy alarms have banished quite.

And my loves, ah well-a-day!

Thou hast driven them all away;

Here I lie on the cold clay:

All alone, with none to care,

While the dank dews wet my hair.

Such, accursèd Troy, thy fare!

Erewhile Ajax, stalwart knight,

Was my buckler in the fight,

Shield against the alarm of might.

Now by Fate a victim led

To the altar, he hath bled;

And for me all joy hath fled.

O that from this barren strand

Wafted to Athena’s land

I on Sunium’s brow might stand;

Hear the waves that round it beat

Wash the wooded headland’s feet,

Sacred Athens thence to greet!

Lo I return in haste; I saw approach

Great Agamemnon, captain of the host;

’Tis plain he means to vent on us his spleen.

So, Sirrah, it is thou (for thus I learn)

Hast dared to rant and curse and threaten us,

Thus far unpunished; thou the bondmaid’s son.

Ha! had thy mother been a high-born dame,