Electra

Enter Aged Servant with Orestes and Pylades.

Aged Servant

O Child of Agamemnon, who sometime Was Captain of the host that leaguered Troy, ’Tis thine at last to view before thee spread The scene thy heart was set on. Yonder lies Old Argos thou so long hast yearned to see, Once refuge of the gadfly-driven maid, Daughter of Inachus; and, Orestes, here The market-place from the Wolf-slayer named; There on our left is Hera’s far-famed shrine; And lo! before us, at our very feet Thou seest Mycenae of the golden hoard, And there the palace grim of Pelops’ line, Deep stained with murder. Thence I bore thee once Snatched from beside thy father’s bleeding corse By kindly hands, thy sister’s; rescued thus I fostered thee till thou hadst reached the age To be the avenger of thy father’s blood. But now, Orestes, and thou, Pylades, Dearest of friends, the hour for you is ripe To take resolve and that right speedily. For lo, already the bright beams of day Waken to melody the pipe of birds, And black night with her glimmering stars has waned. So ere a soul be stirring in the streets Confer together and resolve yourselves. No time for longer pause; now must we act.

Orestes

Dearest of followers, how well thou show’st The constant service of thy loyalty! For as the high-bred steed, though he be old, Pricks up his ears and champs the bit for joy When battle rages, even so dost thou Both urge us on and follow with the first.

O holy light, O circumambient air, What wailings of despair, What sight Have ye not witnessed in the first grey morn, Beatings of breasts and bosoms madly torn! By night for me is spread No festal banquet in this haunted hall, But my lone pallet bed. All night I muse upon my father dead, Not in a foreign land at Ares’ call, But here, at home, by my own mother slain; Her and Aegisthus, these adulterers twain; Felled by their axe’s bloody stroke, E’en as the woodman fells an oak. And I, O father, I alone of all Thy house am left forlorn To make my moan, to mourn Thy piteous fall.

Yet never, while these eyes Behold or sun or star-bespangled skies, Will I restrain my plaint, my bitter cries; But like some nightingale My ravished nest bewail, And through these halls shall sound my groans and sighs. Halls of Persephonè and Death, Guide of the shades, O Hermes, and O Wraith, Ye god-sprung Furies dread Who watch when blood is shed, Or stained the marriage bed, O aid me to avenge my father slain, O send my brother back again! Alone, no more I countervail Grief that o’erloads the scale.

Enter Chorus.

Chorus

Strophe 1

Chrysothemis

’Tis said that she beheld thy sire and mine In bodily presence standing by her side, Revisiting the light of day. He took The sceptre of Aegisthus, once his own, And at the household altar planted it, And from it sprang and spread a fruitful bough, Till it o’ershadowed all Mycenae’s land. Such is the tale one told me who was by When to the Sun-god she declared her dream. Further I know not, save that in alarm She sent me hither. Hearken then to me. Sister, I pray thee by our household gods, Fall not through folly; if thou spurn me now Too late in sorrow wilt thou seek my aid.

Electra

Nay, let not aught, my sister, touch the tomb, Of all thou bearest. ’Twere a shame, a sin, To offer on behalf of her, the accursed, Gifts or libations to our father’s ghost. Scatter them to the winds or bury them Deep in the dust, where nothing may defile Our father’s lone couch; let her find them there, A buried treasure when she comes to die. Were she not abjectest of womankind, She ne’er had thought with offerings of hate To crown her murdered victim’s sepulchre. Thinkst thou ’tis likely that her buried lord Will take these honours kindly at her hands Who slew him without pity like a foe, Mangled his corse, and for ablution washed The bloodstains on his head?

Enter Clytemnestra.

Clytemnestra

So once again I find thee here at large, For he who kept thee close and so restrained Thy scandalous tongue, Aegisthus, is away; Yet thy complaints, repeated many a time To many, censured my tyrannic rule⁠— The insults that I heaped on thee and thine. Was it an insult if I paid in kind The flouts and taunts wherewith thou girdest at me? Thy father, the sole pretext of thy grief, Died by my hand, aye mine, I know it well, ’Tis true beyond denial; yet not I, Not I alone, but Justice slew him too: And thou shouldst side with Justice, wert thou wise. This sire of thine for whom thy tears still flow Alone of all the Greeks could steel his heart To yield thy sister as a sacrifice; A father who begat her and ne’er felt A mother’s pangs of travail. Tell me now Wherefore he offered her, on whose behalf? The Greeks, thou sayest. And what right had they To kill my child? For Menelaus’ sake, His brother? Should such pretext stay my hand? Had not his brother children twain to serve As victims? Should not they, as born of sire And mother for whose sake the host embarked, Have been preferred before my innocent child? Had Death forsooth some craving for my child Rather than hers? or had the wretch, her sire, A tender heart for Menelaus’ brood, And for my flesh and blood no tenderness? That choice was for a father rash and base; So, though I differ from thee, I opine, And could the dead maid speak, she would agree.

Last relics of the man I most did love, Orestes! high in hope I sent thee forth; How hast thou dashed all hope in thy return! Radiant as day thou speddest forth, and now I hold a dusty nothing in my hands. Would I had died before I rescued thee From death and sent thee to a foreign land! Then hadst thou fallen together with thy sire And lain beside him in the ancestral tomb: Now in a strange land, exiled, far from home, Far from thy sister thou hast died, ah me! How miserably! I was not by to lave And deck with loving hands thy corse, and snatch Thy charrèd bones from out the flaming pyre. Alas! by foreign hands these rites were paid, And now thou comest back to me, of dust A little burden in this little urn. O for the nursing and the toil, no toil, I spent on thee an infant, all in vain! For thou wast ne’er thy mother’s babe, but mine; Thou hadst no nurse in all the house but me, I was thy sister, none so called but me. But now all this hath vanished in a day, Dead with thy death, a whirlwind that passed by, And left all desolate; thy father’s gone, And I am dead in thee, and thou art lost; And our foes laugh. That mother, mother none, Whose crimes, as oft thou gav’st me secret word, Thou wouldst thyself full speedily avenge, Is mad for joy.