Nay, but now thou speakest wisely;

This thrice-potent god precisely

Works our woe, and weaves our sorrow.

He with madness stings the marrow,

And with greed that thirsts for blood;

Ere to-day’s is dry, the flood

Flows afresh to-morrow.

STROPHE IV.
Chorus.

Him, even him, this terrible god, to bear

These walls are fated;

From age to age he worketh wildly there

With wrath unsated.

Not without Jove, Jove cause and end of all,

Nor working vainly.

Comes no event but with high sway the gods

Have ruled it plainly.

STROPHE V.
Chorus.

O the king! the king! for thee

Tears in vain my cheek shall furrow,

Words in vain shall voice my sorrow!

As in a spider’s web thou liest;

Godless meshes spread for thee,

An unworthy death thou diest!

STROPHE VI.
Chorus.

There, even there thou liest, woe’s me, outstretched

On couch inglorious;

O’er thee the knife prevailed, keen-edged, by damned

Deceit victorious.

STROPHE VII.
Clytemnestra.

Nay, be wise, and understand;

Say not Agamemnon’s wife

Wielded in this human hand

The fateful knife.

But a god, my spirit’s master,

The unrelenting old Alastorⁿ⁹⁴

Chose this wife, his incarnation,

To avenge the desecration

Of foul-feasting Atreus; he

Gave, to work his wrath’s completion,

To the babes this grown addition.

ANTISTROPHE IV.
Chorus.

Thy crime is plain: bear thou what thou hast merited,

Guilt’s heavy lading;

But that fell Spirit, from sire to son inherited,

Perchance was aiding.

Black-mantled Mars through consanguineous gore

Borne onwards blindly,

Old horrors to atone, fresh Murder’s store

Upheaps unkindly.

ANTISTROPHE V.

O the king! the king! for thee

Tears in vain my cheek shall furrow,

Words in vain shall voice my sorrow!

As in a spider’s web thou liest;

Godless meshes spread for thee,

An unworthy death thou diest.

ANTISTROPHE VI.
Chorus.

There, even there, thou liest, woe’s me, outstretched

On couch inglorious!

O’er thee the knife prevailed, keen-edged, by damned

Deceit victorious.

ANTISTROPHE VII.
Clytemnestra.

Say not thou that he did die

By unworthy death inglorious;

Erst himself prevailed by damned

Deceit victorious,

Then when he killed the deep-lamented

Iphigenía, nor relented

When for my body’s fruit with weeping

I besought him. Springs his reaping

From what seed he sowed. Not he

In Hades housed shall boast to-day;

So slain by steel as he did slay.

STROPHE VIII.
Chorus.

I’m tossed with doubt, on no sure counsel grounded,

With fear confounded.

No drizzling drops, a red ensanguined shower,

Upon the crazy house, that was my tower,

Comes wildly sweeping,

On a new whetstone whets her blade the Fate

With eyes unweeping.

STROPHE IX.
Chorus.

O Earth, O Earth, would thou hadst yawned,

And in thy black pit whelmed me wholly,

Ere I had seen my dear-loved lord

In the silver bath thus bedded lowly!

Who will bury him? and for him

With salt tears what eyes shall brim?

Wilt thou do it—thou, the wife

That slew thy husband with the knife?

Wilt thou dare, with blushless face,

Thus to offer a graceless grace?

With false show of pious moaning,

Thine own damned deed atoning?

STROPHE X.
Chorus.

What voice the praises of the godlike man

Shall publish clearly?

And o’er his tomb the tear from eyelids wan

Shall drop sincerely?

STROPHE XI.
Clytemnestra.

In vain thy doubtful heart is tried

With many sorrows. By my hand

Falling he fell, and dying died.ⁿ⁹⁵

I too will bury him; but no train

Of mourning men for him shall plain

In our Argive streets; but rather

In the land of sunless cheer

She shall be his convoy; she,

Iphigenía, his daughter dear.

By the stream of woes^f30 swift-flowing,

Round his neck her white arms throwing,

She shall meet her gentle father,

And greet him with a kiss.

ANTISTROPHE VIII.
Chorus.

Crime quitting crime, and which the more profanely

Were questioned vainly;

’Tis robber robbed, and slayer slain, for, though

Oft-times it lag, with measured blow for blow

Vengeance prevaileth,

While great Jove lives.ⁿ⁹⁶ Who breaks the close-linked woe

Which Heaven entaileth?

ANTISTROPHE IX.
Chorus.

O Earth, O Earth, would thou hadst yawned,

And in thy black pit whelmed me wholly,

Ere I had seen my dear-loved lord

In the silver bath thus bedded lowly!

Who will bury him? and for him

With salt tears, what eyes shall brim?

Wilt thou do it? thou, the wife

That killed thy husband with the knife?

Wilt thou dare, with blushless face,

Thus to offer a graceless grace?

With false show of pious moaning

Thine own damned deed atoning?

ANTISTROPHE X.
Chorus.

What voice the praises of the god-like man

Shall publish clearly?

And o’er his tomb the tear from eyelids wan

Shall drop sincerely?

ANTISTROPHE XI.
Clytemnestra.

Cease thy cries. Where Heaven entaileth,

Thyself didst say, woe there prevaileth.

But for this tide enough hath been

Of bloody work. My score is clean.

Now to the ancient stern Alastor,

That crowns the Pleisthenids^f31 with disaster,

I vow, having reaped his crop of woe

From me, to others let him go,

And hold with them his bloody bridal,

Of horrid murders suicidal!

Myself, my little store amassed

Shall freely use, while it may last,

From murdering madness healed.

Enter Ægisthus.

Ægisthus.

O blessed light! O happy day proclaiming

The justice of the gods! Now may I say

The Olympians look from heaven sublime, to note

Our woes, and right our wrongs, seeing as I see

In the close meshes of the Erinnyes tangled

This man—sweet sight to see!—prostrate before me,

Having paid the forfeit of his father’s crime.

For Atreus, ruler of this Argive land,

This dead man’s father—to be plain—contending

About the mastery, banished from the city

Thyestes, his own brother and my father.

In suppliant guise back to his hearth again

The unhappy prince returned, content if he

Might tread his native acres, not besprent

With his own blood. Him with a formal show

Of hospitality—not love—received

The father of this dead, the godless Atreus;

And to my father for the savoury use

Of festive viands gave his children’s flesh

To feed on; in a separate dish concealed

Were legs and arms, and the fingers’ pointed tips,ⁿ⁹⁷

Broke from the body. These my father saw not;

But what remained, the undistinguished flesh,

He with unwitting greed devoured, and ate

A curse to Argos. Soon as known, his heart

Disowned the unholy feast, and with a groan

Back-falling he disgorged it. Then he vowed

Dark doom to the Pelopidae, and woes

Intolerable, while with his heel he spurnedⁿ⁹⁸

The supper, and thus voiced the righteous curse:

Thus perish all the race of Pleisthenes!

See here the cause why Agamemnon died,

And why his death most righteous was devised

By me; for I, Thyestes’ thirteenth son,

While yet a swaddled babe, was driven away

To houseless exile with my hapless sire.

But me avenging Justice nursed, and taught me,

Safer by distance, with invisible hand

To reach this man, and weave the brooded plot,

That worked his sure destruction. Now ’tis done;

And gladly might I die, beholding him,

There as he lies where Vengeance trapped his crimes.

Chorus.

Ægisthus, that thou wantonest in the woe

Worked by thy crime I praise not. Thou alone

Didst slay this man, and planned the piteous slaughter

With willing heart. So say’st thou: but mark well,

Justice upon thy head the stony curse

Shall bring avoidless from the people’s hand.

Ægisthus.

How? Thou who sittest on the neathmost bench,

Speak’st thus to me who ply the upper oar?

’Tis a hard task to teach an old man wisdom,

And dullness at thy years is doubly dull;

But chains and hunger’s pangs sure leeches are,

And no diviner vends more potent balms

To drug a doting wit.ⁿ⁹⁹ Have eyes, and see,

Kick not against the pricks, nor vainly beat

Thy head on rocks.

Chorus.
(to Clytemnestra)

Woman, how couldst thou dare,

On thine own hearth to plot thy husband’s death;

First having shamed his bed, to welcome him

With murder from the wars?

Ægisthus.

Speak on; each word shall be a fount of tears,

I’ll make thy tongue old Orpheus’ opposite.

He with sweet sounds led wild beasts where he would,

Thou where thou wilt not shalt be led, confounding

The woods with baby cries. Thou barkest now,

But, being bound, the old man shall be tame.

Chorus.

A comely king wert thou to rule the Argives!

Whose wit had wickedness to plan the deed,

But failed the nerve in thy weak hand to do it.

Ægisthus.

’Twas wisely schemed with woman’s cunning wit

To snare him. I, from ancient date his foe,

Stood in most just suspicion. Now, ’tis done;

And I, succeeding to his wealth, shall know

To hold the reins full tightly. Who rebels

Shall not with corn be fatted for my traces,

But, stiffly haltered, he shall lodge secure

In darkness, with starvation for his mate.

Chorus.

Hear me yet once. Why did thy dastard hand

Shrink from the deed? But now his wife hath done it,

Tainting this land with murder most abhorred,

Polluting Argive gods. But still Orestes

Looks on the light; him favouring Fortune shall

Nerve with one stroke to smite this guilty pair.

Ægisthus.

Nay, if thou for brawls art eager, and for battle, thou shalt know—

Chorus.

Ho! my gallant co-mates, rouse ye!ⁿ¹⁰⁰ ’tis an earnest business now!

Quick, each hand with sure embracement hold the dagger by the hilt!

Ægisthus.

I can also hold a hilted dagger—not afraid to die.

Chorus.

Die!—we catch the word thou droppest; lucky chance, if thou wert dead!

Clytemnestra.

Not so, best-beloved! there needeth no enlargement to our ills.

We have reaped a liberal harvest, gleaned a crop of fruitful woes,

Gained a loss in brimming measure: blood’s been shed enough to-day.

Peacefully, ye hoary Elders, enter now your destined homes,

Ere mischance o’ertake you, deeming what is done hath so been done,

As it behoved to be, contented if the dread god add no more,

He that now the house of Pelops smiteth in his anger dire.

Thus a woman’s word doth warn ye, if that ye have wit to hear.

Ægisthus.

Babbling fools are they; and I forsooth must meekly bear the shower,

Flowers of contumely east from doting drivellers, tempting fate!

O! if length of hoary winters brought discretion, ye should know

Where the power is; wisely subject you the weak to me the strong.

Chorus.

Ill beseems our Argive mettle to court a coward on a throne.

Ægisthus.

Shielded now, be brave with words; my deeds expect some future day.

Chorus.

Ere that day belike some god shall bring Orestes to his home.

Ægisthus.

Feed, for thou hast nothing better, thou and he, on empty hope.

Chorus.

Glut thy soul, a lusty sinner, with sin’s fatness, while thou may’st.

Ægisthus.

Thou shalt pay the forfeit, greybeard, of thy braggart tongue anon.

Chorus.

Oh, the cock beside its partlet now may crow right valiantly!

Clytemnestra.

Heed not thou these brainless barkings. While to folly folly calls,

Thou and I with wise command shall surely sway these Argive halls.

[The End]

CHOEPHORÆ
OR, THE LIBATION-BEARERS

PERSONS

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS

The right of the avenger of blood, so familiar to us from its prominency in the Mosaic Law (see Numbers, chap. 35), is a moral phenomenon which belongs to a savage or semi-civilized state of society in all times and places; and appears everywhere with the most distinct outline in the rich records of the early age of Greece, which we possess in the Homeric poems. No doubt, the most glowing intensity, and the passionate exaggeration of the feeling, from which this right springs, is found only among the hot children of the Arabian desert;^f1 and in no point of his various enactments were the wisdom and the humanity of their great Jewish lawgiver more conspicuous than in the appointment of sacerdotal cities of refuge, which set certain intelligible bounds of space and time to the otherwise interminable prosecution of family feuds, and the gratification of private revenge. But the great traits of the system of private revenge for manslaughter, stand out clearly in the Iliad and Odyssey; and the whole of the ancient heroic mythology of Greece is full of adventures and strange chances that grew out of this germ. Out of many, I shall mention only the following instance. In the twenty-third book of the Iliad (v. 82), when the shade of Patroclus appears at the head of his sorrowful, sleeping friend, after urging the necessity of instant funeral, for the peace of his soul, he proceeds to make a further request, as follows:—

In these verses, we see the common practice of the heroic ages in Greece, with regard to manslaughter. No matter how slight the occasion might be out of which the lethal quarrel arose; how innocent soever of all hostile intention the unhappy offender; the only safety to him from the private revenge of the kinsman of the person unwittingly slain, was to flee to a country that acknowledged some foreign chief, and find both a friend and a country in a distant land. All this, too, in an era of civilization, when courts of law and regular judges (as from various passages of Homer is apparent) were not altogether unknown; but nature is stronger than law, and passion slow to yield up its fiery right of summary revenge, for the cold, calculating retribution of an impartial judge.

The person on whom the duty of avenging shed blood, according to the heroic code of morals, fell, was the nearest of kin to the person whose blood had been shed; and accordingly we find (as stated more at large by Gesenius and Michaelis^f2) that in the Hebrew language, the same word means both an avenger of blood and a kinsman, while in the cognate Arabic the term for an avenger means also a survivor—that is, the surviving kinsman. In the same way, when Clytemnestra, as we have just seen in the previous drama, had treacherously murdered her husband Agamemnon, the code of social morality then existing laid the duty of avenging this most unnatural deed on the nearest relation of the murdered chieftain, viz.—his son, Orestes; a sore duty indeed, in this case, as the principal offender was his own mother: so that in vindicating one feeling of his filial nature the pious son had to do violence to another; but a duty it still remained; and there does not appear the slightest trace that it was considered one whit the less imperative on account of the peculiar relation that existed here between the dealer of the vengeful blow and the person on whom it was dealt. Whoso sheddeth man’s blood by man shall his blood be shed was the old patriarchal law on the subject, proclaimed without limitation and without exception; and the cry of innocent blood rose to Heaven with peculiar emphasis when the sufferer was both a father and a king.

is the wisdom of old Nestor with regard to this subject and this very case: and the wise goddess Athena, the daughter of the Supreme Councillor, in whom “all her father lives,” stamps her distinct approval on the deed of Orestes, by which Clytemnestra was murdered, and holds him up as an illustrious example to Telemachus, by which his own conduct was to be regulated in reference to the insolent and unjust suitors who were consuming his father’s substance.

Public opinion, therefore, to use a modern phrase, not only justified Orestes in compassing the death of his mother, but imperatively called on him to do so. Public opinion, however, could not control Nature, nor save the unfortunate instrument of paternal retribution from that revulsion of feeling which must necessarily ensue, when the hand of the son is once red with the blood of her whose milk he had sucked. Orestes finds himself torn in twain by two contrary instincts, the victim of two antagonist rights. No sooner are the Furies of the father asleep, than those of the mother awake; and thus the bloody catastrophe of the present piece prepares the way for that tragic conflict of opposing moral claims set forth with such power in the third piece of this trilogy—the Eumenides.

The action of this play is the simplest possible, and will, for the most part, explain itself sufficiently as it proceeds. Clytemnestra, disturbed in conscience, and troubled by evil dreams, sends a chorus of young women to offer libations at the tomb of Agamemnon, which, in the present play, may fitly be conceived as occupying the centre of the stage.^f3 These “libation-bearers” give the name to the piece. In their pious function, Electra, the daughter of Agamemnon, joins; and as she is engaged in the solemn rite, her brother Orestes (who had been living as an exile in Phocis with Strophius, married to Anaxibia, the sister of Agamemnon) suddenly arrives, and making himself known to his sister, plans with her the murder of Ægisthus and Clytemnestra—which is accordingly executed. Scarcely is this done, when the Furies of the murdered mother appear, and commence that chase of the unhappy son from land to land, which is ended in the next piece only by the eloquent intercession of Apollo, and the deliberative wisdom of the blue-eyed virgin-goddess of the Acropolis.

As a composition, the Choephoræ is decidedly inferior both to the Agamemnon which precedes, and the Eumenides which follows it; and the poet, as if sensible of this weakness, following the approved tactics of rhetoricians and warriors, has dexterously placed it in a position where its deficiencies are least observed. At the same time, in passing a critical judgment on this piece we must bear in mind two things—first, that some parts of this play that appear languid, long-drawn, and ineffective to us who read, may have been overflowing with the richest emotional power in their living musical exhibition; and, secondly, that many parts, especially of the choral chaunts, have been so maimed and shattered by time that the modern commentator is perhaps as much chargeable with the faults of the translation as the ancient tragedian.

CHOEPHORÆ

Enter Orestes and Pylades.

Orestes.

Hermes, that wieldest underneath the ground

What power thy father lent,ⁿ¹ be thou my saviour

And my strong help, and grant his heart’s request

To the returning exile! On this mound,

My father’s tomb, my father I invoke,

To hear my cry!

* * * * * *

* * My early growth of hair

To Inachus I vowed;ⁿ² this later lock

The right of grief for my great sire demands.

* * * * * *

But what is this? what sad procession comes

Of marshalled maids in sable mantles clad?

What mission brings them? Some new woe that breaks

Upon our fated house? Or, do they come

To soothe the ancient anger of the dead

With sweet libations for my father’s tomb?

’Tis even so: for lo! Electra comes—

My sister—with them in unblissful grief

Pre-eminent. O Jove, be thou mine aid,ⁿ³

And nerve my hand to avenge my father’s wrong!

Stand we aside, my Pylades, that we

May learn the purpose of the murky pomp. [They go aside.

Chorus.
(dressed in sable vestments, bearing vessels with libations.)
STROPHE I.

Missioned from these halls I come

In the sable pomp of woe,

Here to wail and pour libations,

With the bosom-beating blow;

And my cheeks, that herald sorrow,ⁿ⁴

With the fresh-cut nail-ploughed furrow,

Grief’s vocation show.

See! my rent and ragged stole

Speaks the conflict of my soul;

My vex’d heart on grief is feeding,

Night and day withouten rest;

Riven with the ruthless mourning,

Hangs the linen vest, adorning

Woefully my breast.

ANTISTROPHE I.

Breathing wrath through nightly slumbers,

By a dream-encompassed lair,

Prophet of the house of Pelops,

Terror stands with bristling hair.

Through the dark night fitful yelling,

He within our inmost dwelling

Did the sleeper scare.

Heavily, heavily terror falls

On the woman-governed halls!

And, instinct with high assurance,

Speak the wise diviners all;

“The dead, the earth-hid dead are fretful,

And for vengeance unforgetful,

From their graves they call.”

STROPHE II.

This graceless grace to do, to ward

What ills the dream portendeth

This pomp—O mother Earth!—and me

The godless woman sendeth.

Thankless office! Can I dare,

Naming thee, to mock the air?

Blood that stains with purple track

The ground, what price can purchase back?

O the hearth beset with mourning!

O the proud halls’ overturning!

Darkness, blithe sight’s detestation,

Sunless sorrow spread

Round the house of desolation,

Whence the lord is fled.

ANTISTROPHE II.

The kingly majesty that was

The mighty, warlike-hearted,

That swayed the general ear and will,

The unconquered, hath departed.

And now fear rules,ⁿ⁵ and we obey,

Unwillingly, a loveless sway.

Who holds the key of plenty’s portals

Is god, and more than god to mortals;

But justice from her watchful station,

With a sure-winged visitation

Swoops; and some in blazing noon

She for doom doth mark,

Some in lingering eve, and some

In the deedless dark.

EPODE.

When mother Earth hath drunk black gore,

Printed on the faithful floor,

The staring blot remaineth;

There the deep disease is lurking;

There thrice double-guilt is working

Woes that none restraineth.

As virgin-chambers once polluted

Never may be pure again,

So filthy hands with blood bedabbledⁿ⁶

All the streams of all the rivers

Flow to wash in vain.

For me I suffer what I must;

By ordinance divine,

Since Troy was levelled with the dust

The bondman’s fate is mine.

What the masters of my fate

In their strength decree,ⁿ⁷

Just or unjust, matters not,

Is the law to me.

I must look content; and chain

Strongest hate with tightest rein;

I for my mistress’ woes must wail,

And for my own, beneath the veil;ⁿ⁸

I must sit apart,

And thaw with tears my frozen heart,

When no eye may see.

Enter Electra.

Electra.

Ye ministering maids with dexterous heed

That tend this household, as with me ye share

This pomp of supplication, let me share

In your good counsel. Speak, and tell me how,

This flood funereal pouring on the tomb,

I shall find utterance in well-omened words?

Shall I declare me bearer of sweet gifts

From a dear wife to her dear lord? I fear

To mingle faslehood with libations pure,

Poured on my father’s tomb.ⁿ⁹ Or shall I pray,

As mortals wont to pray, that he may send

Just retribution, and a worthy gift

Of ill for ill to them that sent these garlands?

Or shall I silent stand, nor with my tongue

Give honour, as in dumb dishonoured death

My father died, and give the Earth to drink

A joyless stream, as who throws lustral ashesⁿ¹⁰

With eyes averse, and flings the vase away?

Your counsel here I crave; ye are my friends,

And bear with me, within these fated halls

A common burden. Speak, and no craven fear

Lurk in your breasts! The man that lives most free,

And him to sternest masterdom enthralled,

One fate abides. Lend me your wisdom, friends.

Chorus.

Thy father’s tomb shall be to me an altar;

As before God I’ll speak the truth to thee.

Electra.

Speak thus devoutly, and thou’lt answer well.

Chorus.

Give words of seemly honour, as thou pourest,

To all that love thy father.

Electra.

Who are they?

Chorus.

Thyself the first, and whoso hates Ægisthus.

Electra.

That is myself and thou.

Chorus.

Thyself may’st judge.

Electra.

Hast thou none else to swell the scanty roll?

Chorus.

One far away, thy brother, add—Orestes.

Electra.

’Tis well remembered, very well remembered.

Chorus.

Nor them forget that worked the deed of guilt.

Electra.

Ha! what of them? I’d hear of this more nearly.

Chorus.

Pray that some god may come, or mortal man.

Electra.

Judge or avenger?

Chorus.

Roundly pray the prayer,

Some god or man may come to slay the slayer.

Electra.

And may I pray the gods such boon as this?

Chorus.

Why not? What other quittance to a foe

Than hate repaid with hate, and blow with blow?ⁿ¹¹

Electra.
(approaching to the tomb of Agamemnon)

Hermes, that swayest underneath the ground,^{f4 n12}

Of powers divine, Infernal and Supernal,

Most weighty herald, herald me in this,

That every subterranean god, and earth,

Even mother earth, who gave all things their birth,

And nurseth the reviving germs of all,

May hear my prayer, and with their sleepless eyes

Watch my parental halls. And while I dew

Thy tomb with purifying stream, O father,

Pity thou me, and on thy loved Orestes

With pity look, and to our long lost home

Restore us!—us, poor friendless outcasts both,

Bartered by her who bore us, and exchanged

Thy love for his who was thy murderer.

Myself do menial service in this house;

Orestes lives in exile; and they twain

In riot waste the fruits of thy great toils.

Hear thou my prayers, and quickly send Orestes

With happy chance to claim his father’s sceptre!

And give thou me a wiser heart, and hand

More holy-functioned than the mother’s was

That bore thy daughter. Thus much for myself,

And for my friends. To those that hate my father,

Rise thou with vengeance mantled-dark to smite

Those justly that unjustly smote the just.

These words of evil imprecation dire,ⁿ¹³

Marring the pious tenor of my prayer,

I speak constrained: but thou for me and mine

Send good, and only good, to the upper air,

The gods being with thee, mother Earth, and Justice

With triumph in her train. This prayer receive

And these libations. Ye, my friends, the while

Let your grief blossom in luxuriant wail,

Lifting the solemn pæan of the dead.

Chorus.ⁿ¹⁴

Flow! in plashing torrents flow!

Wretched grief for wretched master!

O’er this heaped mound freely flow,

Refuge of my heart’s disaster!

O thou dark majestic shade,

Hear, O hear me! While anear thee

Pours this sorrow-stricken maid

The pure libation,

May the solemn wail we lift

Atone the guilt that taints the gift

With desecration!

O that some god from Scythia far,

To my imploring,

Might send a spearman strong in war,

Our house restoring!

Come Mars, with back-bent bow, thy hail

Of arrows pouring,

Or with the hilted sword assail,

And in the grapple close prevail,

Of battle roaring!

Electra.ⁿ¹⁵

These mild libations, earth-imbibed, my father

Hath now received. Thy further counsel lend.

Chorus.

In what? Within me leaps my heart for fear.

Electra.

Seest thou this lock of hair upon the tomb?

Chorus.

A man’s hair is it, or a low-zoned maid’s?ⁿ¹⁶

Electra.

Few points there are to hit. ’Tis light divining.

Chorus.

I am thine elder; yet I fain would reap

Instruction from young lips.

Electra.

If it was dipt

From head in Argos, it should be my own.ⁿ¹⁷

Chorus.

For they that should have shorn the mourning lock

Are foes, not friends.

Electra.

’Tis like, O strange! how like!

Chorus.

Like what? What strange conception stirs thy brain?

Electra.

’Tis like—O strange!—to these same locks I wear.

And yet—

Chorus.

Not being yours, there’s none, I know,

Can claim it but Orestes.

Electra.

In sooth, ’tis like.

Trimmed with one plume Orestes was and I.

Chorus.

But how should he have dared to tread this ground?

Electra.

Belike, he sent it by another’s hand,

A votive lock to grace his father’s tomb.

Chorus.

Small solace to my grief, if that he lives,

Yet never more may touch his native soil.

Electra.

I, too, as with a bitter wave was lashed,

And pierced, as with an arrow, at the sight

Of this loved lock; and from my thirsty eyne

With troubled overflowings unrestrained

The full tide gushes: for none here would dare

To gift a lock to Agamemnon’s grave;

No citizen, much less the wife that slew him.

My mother most unmotherly, her own children

With godless hate pursuing, evil-minded:

And though to think this wandering lock have graced

My brother’s head—even his—my loved Orestes,

Were bliss too great, yet will I hold the hope.

O that this lock might with articulate voice

Pronounce a herald’s tale, and I no more

This way and that with dubious thought be swayed!

That I might know if from a hostile head

’Twas shorn, and hate it as it hate deserves,

Or, if from friends, my sorrows’ fellow make it,

The dearest grace of my dear father’s tomb!

But the gods know our woes; them we invoke,

Whirled to and fro in eddies of dark doubt,

Like vessels tempest-tossed. If they will save us,

They have the power from smallest seed to raise

The goodliest tree. But lo! a further proofⁿ¹⁸—

Footsteps, a perfect print, that seem to bear

A brotherhood with mine! Nay, there are two—

This claimed by him, and that by some true friend

That shares his wanderings. See, the heel, the sole,

Thus measured with my own, prove that they were

Both fashioned in one mould. ’Tis very strange!

I’m racked with doubt, my wits are wandering.

Orestes.
(coming forward)

Nay, rather thank the gods! Thy first prayer granted,

Pray that fair end may fair beginning follow.ⁿ¹⁹

Electra.

Sayest thou? What cause have I to thank the gods?

Orestes.

Even here before thee stands thine answered prayer.

Electra.

One man I wish to see: dost know him—thou?

Orestes.

Thy wish of wishes is to see Orestes.

Electra.

Even so: but wishing answers no man’s prayer.

Orestes.

I am the man. No dearer one expect

That wears that name.

Electra.

Nay, but this is some plot?

Orestes.

That were to frame a plot against myself.

Electra.

Unkind, to scoff at my calamities!

Orestes.

To scoff at thine, were scoffing at mine own.

Electra.

And can it be? Art thou indeed Orestes?

Orestes.

My bodily self thou seest, and dost not know!

And yet the votive lock shorn from my head,

Being to thine, my sister’s hair, conform,

And my foot’s print with curious ardour scanned,

Could wing thy faith beyond the reach of sense,

That thou didst seem to see me! Take the lock,

And match it nicely with this mother crop

That bore it. More; behold this web,ⁿ²⁰ the fruit

Of thine own toil, the strokes of thine own shuttle,

The wild beasts of the woods by thine own hand

Empictured! Nay, be calm, and keep thy joy

Within wise bounds. Too well I know that they

Who should be friends here are our bitterest foes.

Electra.

O of my father’s house the chiefest care!

Seed of salvation, hope with many, tears

Bewept, with thy strong arm thou shalt restore

Thy father’s house. O my life’s eye, thou dost

Four several functions corporate in one

Discharge for me! My father thou, and thine

The gentler love that should have been my mother’s,

My justly hated mother; and in her place,

Who died by merciless immolation,^f5 thou

Must be my sister, so even as thou art

My faithful brother, loved much and revered.

May Power and Justice aid thee, mighty Twain,ⁿ²¹

And a third mightier, Jove supremely great.

Orestes.

O Jove, great Jove, of all these things be thou

Spectator! And behold the orphan’d brood,

Of eagle father strangled in the folds

And deadly coil of loathly basilisk!

Them sireless see in dire starvation’s gripe,

Too weak of wing to bear unto the nest

Their father’s prey. So we before thee stand,

Myself and this Electra, sire-bereaved,

And exiles both from our paternal roof.

If we, the chickens of the pious father

That crowned thee with much sacrifice, shall fail,

Where shalt thou find a hand like his, to offer

Gifts from the steaming banquet? If the brood

Of the eagle perish, where shall be thy signs,

That speak from Heaven persuasive to mankind?

If all this royal trunk shall rot, say who,

When blood of oxen flows on holidays,

Shall stand beside thine altar? O give ear,

And of this house so little now, and fallen