Agamemnon
David Plantinga 1972 (Sherbrooke)
King Agamemnon raised a wind
When the whole fleet had lain becalmed.
He’d sacrificed, and hadn’t qualmed.
From horror he could not rescind.
His wife has taken the loss badly.
Not even kings can lessen grief,
Or render the bereft relief.
He’d give his life for hers, and gladly.
And jealousy has made it worse.
The girl is a much younger mate,
But looks and youth can’t replicate
A marriage sorrow can’t reverse.
Any captive’s understandably
A little skittish at the first.
They say she’s mad, that she’s been cursed
With visions of the things to be.
Shamans love to peddle threats
And when the worst misfortune hits
They preen like fortune’s favorites.
And they alone have no regrets.
He had refused a wheedling fraud.
And then a bunch of men got sick.
Confronted by a lunatic,
He’d given in, resigned unawed.
A warlord doesn’t quake from fear
Because a foreign princess whines.
Him frightened by his concubines?
The girl’s annoying but sincere.
About this poem
Agamemnon gets his own poem. This came out of the previous one but it was getting kinda long for Instagram. Beside the Mycenaeans didn’t have dossiers and I wanted to keep the rhyme. “He’d give his life for hers” refers to Iphigenia. I’d have written “He’d have given his life for hers” but that would put me over on syllables.
Submitted by DavidPlantinga on January 31, 2022
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 57 sec read
- 4 Views
Quick analysis:
Scheme | ABACDEEDFGGFDHHDIJJIKLLAMNNM |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,015 |
Words | 190 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 28 |
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"Agamemnon" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 21 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/118886/agamemnon>.
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