Many ill-boding eagles wandered about the Capitol uttering cries that portended naught of peace, and an owl hooted there.

She's happy now, before the throne of God I should be merry; yet my heart's floor sinks As on a fast day; sure some evil bodes.

The porters and the neighbors already manifested an evil-boding surprise.

Here dreadful silence, solitary caves, No chirping birds with solace singing sweetly, Are harbour'd for delight; but from the oak, Leafless and sapless through decaying age, The screech-owl chants her fatal-boding lays.

Then, as they take their places and begin their rhythmic dance, in a strain of impassioned verse that is at once a narrative and a lyric hymn, they tell, or rather present in a series of vivid images, flashing as by illumination of lightning out of a night of veiled and sombre boding, the tale of the deed that darkened the starting of the hostthe sacrifice of Iphigenia to the goddess whose wrath was delaying the fleet at Aulis.