Part 16

CHORUS Ye call unto the dead; I quake to hear. Fate is ordained of old, and shall fulfil your prayer.

ELECTRA Alas, the inborn curse that haunts our home, Of Atè’s bloodstained scourge the tuneless sound! Alas, the deep insufferable doom, The stanchless wound!

ORESTES It shall be stanched, the task is ours,— Not by a stranger’s, but by kindred hand, Shall be chased forth the blood-fiend of our land. Be this our spoken spell, to call Earth’s nether powers!

CHORUS Lords of a dark eternity, To you has come the children’s cry, Send up from hell, fulfil your aid To them who prayed.

ORESTES O father, murdered in unkingly wise, Fulfil my prayer, grant me thine halls to sway.

ELECTRA To me too, grant this boon—dark death to deal Unto Aegisthus, and to ’scape my doom.

ORESTES So shall the rightful feasts that mortals pay Be set for thee; else, not for thee shall rise The scented reek of altars fed with flesh, But thou shall lie dishonoured: hear thou me!

ELECTRA I too, from my full heritage restored, Will pour the lustral streams, what time I pass Forth as a bride from these paternal halls, And honour first, beyond all graves, thy tomb.

ORESTES Earth, send my sire to fend me in the fight!

ELECTRA Give fair-faced fortune, O Persephone!

ORESTES Bethink thee, father, in the laver slain—

ELECTRA Bethink thee of the net they handselled for thee!

ORESTES Bonds not of brass ensnared thee, father mine.

ELECTRA Yea, the ill craft of an enfolding robe.

ORESTES By this our bitter speech arise, O sire!

ELECTRA Raise thou thine head at love’s last, dearest call!

ORESTES Yea, speed forth Right to aid thy kinsmen’s cause; Grip for grip, let them grasp the foe, if thou Willest in triumph to forget thy fall.

ELECTRA Hear me, O father, once again hear me. Lo! at thy tomb, two fledglings of thy brood— A man-child and a maid; hold them in ruth, Nor wipe them out, the last of Pelops’ line. For while they live, thou livest from the dead; Children are memory’s voices, and preserve The dead from wholly dying: as a net Is ever by the buoyant corks upheld, Which save the flex-mesh, in the depth submerged. Listen, this wail of ours doth rise for thee, And as thou heedest it thyself art saved.

CHORUS In sooth, a blameless prayer ye spake at length— The tomb’s requital for its dirge denied: Now, for the rest, as thou art fixed to do, Take fortune by the hand and work thy will.

ORESTES The doom is set; and yet I fain would ask— Not swerving from the course of my resolve,— Wherefore she sent these offerings, and why She softens all too late her cureless deed? An idle boon it was, to send them here Unto the dead who recks not of such gifts. I cannot guess her thought, but well I ween Such gifts are skilless to atone such crime. Be blood once spilled, an idle strife he strives Who seeks with other wealth or wine outpoured To atone the deed. So stands the word, nor fails. Yet would I know her thought; speak, if thou knowest.

CHORUS I know it, son; for at her side I stood. ’Twas the night-wandering terror of a dream That flung her shivering from her couch, and bade her— Her, the accursed of God—these offerings send.

ORESTES Heard ye the dream, to tell it forth aright?

CHORUS Yea, from herself; her womb a serpent bare.

ORESTES What then the sum and issue of the tale?

CHORUS Even as a swaddled child, she lull’d the thing.

ORESTES What suckling craved the creature, born full-fanged?

CHORUS Yet in her dreams she proffered it the breast.

ORESTES How? did the hateful thing not bite her teat?