Unhonoured when the dead their banquets call.
And I will pour thee offerings wondrous fair
From my stored riches for a marriage-prayer,
And this thy grave will honour more than all.
Send back, O Earth, my sire to comfort me.
In power, in beauty, Great Persephone!
Remember, Father, how they laved thee there!
Remember the strange weaving thou didst wear!
A snarèd beast in chains no anvil wrought!
In coilèd webs of shame and evil thought!
Scorn upon scorn! Oh, art thou wakenèd?
Dost rear to sunlight that belovèd head?
Or send thine helping Vengeance to the light
To aid the faithful: or let even fight
Be joined in the same grapple as of yore,
If, conquered, thou wouldst quell thy conqueror.
Yet one last cry: O Father, hear and save!
Pity thy children cast upon thy grave:
The woman pity, and the weeping man.
And blot not out the old race that began
With Pelops: and though slain thou art not dead!
Children are living voices for a head
Long silent, floats which hold the net and keep
The twisted line unfoundered in the deep.
Listen: ’tis thou we weep for, none but thou:
Thyself art savèd if thou save us now.
Behold, ye have made a long and yearning praise,20
This sepulchre for unlamented days
Requiting to the full. And for the rest,
Seeing now thine heart is lifted on the crest
Of courage, get thee to the deed, and see
What power the Daemon hath which guardeth thee.21
So be it. Yet methinks to know one thing
Were well. Why sent she this drink-offering?
Hoped she by late atonement to undo
That wrong eternal? A vain comfort, too,
Sent to one dead, and feeling not!22 My mind
Stumbles to understand what lies behind
These gifts, so puny for the deed she hath done.
Yea, though man offer all he hath to atone
For one life’s blood, ’tis written, he hath lost
That labour.—But enough. Say all thou know’st.
Son, I was near her, and could mark aright.
A dream, a terror wandering in the night,
Shook her dark spirit till she spoke that word.
What was the dream she dreamed? Speak, if ye heard.
She bore to life, she said, a Serpent Thing.23
And after? To its head thy story bring.
In swathing clothes she lapt it like a child.
It craved for meat, that dragon of the wild?
Yes; in the dream she gave it her own breast.
And took no scathing from the evil beast?
The milk ran into blood. So deep it bit.
The dream is come. The man shall follow it.
And she, appalled, came shrieking out of sleep;
And many a torch, long blinded in the deep
Of darkness, in our chambers burst afire
To cheer the Queen. Then spake she her desire,
To send, as a swift medicine for the dread
That held her, these peace offerings to the dead.
Behold, I pray this everlasting Earth,
I pray my father’s grave, they bring to birth
In fullness all this dream. And here am I
To read its heart and message flawlessly.
Seeing that this serpent, born whence I was born,
Wore the same swathing-bands these limbs had worn,
Fanged the same breast that suckled me of yore,
And through the sweet milk drew that gout of gore;
And seeing she understood, and sore afeared
Shrieked: therefore it must be that, having reared
A birth most ghastly, she in wrath shall die:
And I, the beast, the serpent, even I
Shall slay her! Be it so. The dream speaks clear.
I take thyself for mine interpreter,
And pray that this may be. But speak thy will
Who shall be doing, say, and who be still?
’Tis simply told. This woman makes her way
Within, and ye my charges shall obey,
That they who slew by guile a man most rare,
By guile, and snarèd in the self-same snare,
May die, as Lord Apollo hath foretold,
Loxias the Seer, who never failed of old.
First, I array me in a stranger’s guise,
With all the gear of travel, and likewise
This man—their guest and battle-guest of yore!
Then hither shall we come, and stand before
The courtyard gate, and call. Aye, we will teach
Our tongues an accent of Parnassian speech,24
Like men in Phôkis born. And say, perchance
None of the warders with glad countenance
Will ope to us, the House being so beset
With evil: aye, what then? Then obdurate
We shall wait on, till all who pass that way
Shall make surmise against the House, and say
“What ails Aigisthos? Wherefore doth he close
His door against the traveller, if he knows
And is within?” So comes it, soon or late,
I cross the threshold of the courtyard gate;
And entering find him on my father’s throne. …
Or, say he is abroad and comes anon,
And hears, and calls for me—and there am I
Before him, face to face and eye to eye;
“Whence comes the traveller?” ere he speaks it, dead
I lay him, huddled round this leaping blade!25
Then shall the Curse have drunken of our gore
Her third, last, burning cup, and thirst no more.
Therefore go thou within, and watch withal
That all this chance may well and aptly fall.
For you, I charge ye of your lips take heed:
Good words or silence, as the hour may need.
While One Below26 his counsel shall afford
And ope to me the strait way of the sword. Orestes and Pylades depart, Electra goes into the House.
Strophe 1
Host on host, breedeth Earth
Things of fear and ghastly birth;
Arm on arm spreads the Sea
That full of coilèd horrors be;
And fires the sky doth multiply;
And things that crawl, and things that fly,
And they that are born in the wind can tell of the perils
Of tempest and the Wrath on high.
Antistrophe 1
But, ah, the surge over-bold
Of man’s passion who hath told?
Who the Love, wild as hate,
In woman’s bosom desperate,
Which feedeth in the fields of Woe?
Where lives of
