he bath, the net, the
axe; then her wailings wax yet wilder as she sees that she herself is to
be included in the sacrifice. Meantime her excitement gradually passes
over to the Chorus: at first they have mistaken her cries for the
ordinary lamentations of captives (and borne their part in the dialogue
in the ordinary 'blank verse'); then their emotions are roused (and their
speech falls into lyrics) as they recognize the old woes of the family
history and remember Cassandra's prophetic fame; as she passes to the
deed going on at the moment they feel a thrill of horror, but only half
understand and take her words for prophecy of _distant_ events, which
they connect with their own forebodings; thus in her struggles to get her
words believed Cassandra becomes more and more graphic in her notices of
the scene her mental eye is seeing, and the excitement crescendoes until:
{1148}

As if the crisis were now determined the dialogue settles down into
'blank verse' again. _Cassandra ascends from Orchestra to Stage_. She
will no longer speak veiled prophecy: it shall flow clear as wave against
the sunlight. She begins with the Furies that never quit the house since
that primal woe that defiled it--as she describes this the _Chorus_
wonder an alien can know the house's history so well--_Cassandra_ lets
them know of her amour with Apollo, and how she gained the gift of
prophecy and then deceived the God and was doomed to have her prophecies
scorned.--Continuing her vision she points to the phantom children,
'their palms filled full with meat of their own flesh,' sitting on the
house: in revenge for that deed another crime is this moment about to
stain further the polluted dwelling, a brave hero falling at the hands of
a coward, and by a plot his monster of a wife has contrived.--The
_Chorus_ still perplexed, _Cassandra_ NAMES Agamemnon, the Chorus
essaying vainly to stop the ill-fated utterance.--Then _Cassandra_ goes
on to describe how she herself must be sacrificed with her new lord, a
victim to the jealous murderess; bitterly reproaching Apollo, she strips
from her the symbols and garb of her prophetic art, which the god has
made so bitter to her, and moves to the 'butcher's block,' foretelling
how the Son shall come as his father's avenger and hers.--The _Chorus_
ask, why go to meet your fate instead of escaping? _Cassandra_ knows
Fate is inevitable.--Again and again she shrinks back from the door,
'tainted with the scent