To approve my words, nor I to approve thy ways.
Go in then; I shall never follow thee,
E’en shouldst thou pray me: ’tis insane to urge
An idle suit.
Well, if thou art wise
In thine own eyes, so let it be; anon,
Sore stricken, thou wilt take my words to heart. Exit Chrysothemis.
Strophe 1
Wise nature taught the birds of air
For those who reared them in the nest to care;
The parent bird is nourished by his brood,
And shall not we, as they,
The debt of nature pay,
Shall man not show like gratitude?
By Zeus who hurls the leven,
By Themis throned in heaven,
There comes a judgment day;
Not long shall punishment delay.
O voice that echoes to the world below,
Bear to the dead a wail of woe,
A coronach, a tale of shame
To Atreus’ line proclaim.
Antistrophe 1
Tell him his house is stricken sore,
Tell him his children now no more
In amity together dwell;
Dire strife the twain divides,
Alone Electra bides,
Alone she braves the surging swell.
Disconsolate doth she her sire bewail,
Like the forlornest nightingale;
Reckless of life, could she but quell
The cursed pair, those Furies fell.
Where shall ye find on earth
A maid to match her worth?
Strophe 2
No generous soul were fain
By a base life his fair repute to stain.
Such baseness thou didst scorn,
Choosing, my child, to mourn with them that mourn.
Wise and of daughters best—
With double honours thou art doubly blest.
Antistrophe 2
O may I see thee tower
As high above thy foes in wealth and power
As now they tower o’er thee;
For now thy state is piteous to see.
Yet brightly dost thou shine,
For fear of Zeus far-famed and love of laws divine.
Pray tell me, ladies, were we guided right,
And are we close upon our journey’s end?
What seek’st thou, stranger, and with what intent?
I seek and long have sought Aegisthus’ home.
’Tis here; thy guide is nowise blameable.
Would one of you announce to those within
The auspicious advent of our company?
This maiden, as the next of kin, will do it.
Go, madam, say that visitors have come
And seek Aegisthus—certain Phocians.
Ah woe is me! You come not to confirm
By ocular proof the rumours that we heard?
I’ve heard no “rumours.” Agèd Strophius
Charged me with tidings of Orestes.
Ha!
What tidings, stranger? how I quake with dread!
Ashes within this narrow urn we bear,
All that remains of him, as thou mayst see.
Ah me unhappy! in my very sight
Lies palpable the burden of my woes.
If for Orestes thou art weeping, know
This brazen urn contains the dust of him.
O if it hold his ashes, let me, friend,
O let me, let me take it in my hands.
Not for this dust alone, but for myself
And all my house withal, I’ll weep and wail.
Bring it and give it her, whoe’er she be;
For not as an ill-wisher, but as friend,
Or haply near of kin, she asks the boon.
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. But now malignant fate,
Thy fate and mine, hath blasted all and sent me,
Instead of that dear form I loved so well,
Cold ashes and an unavailing shade.
Ah me! Ah me!
O piteous corse!
Ah woe is me!
O woeful coming! I am all undone,
Undone by thee, beloved brother mine!
Take me, O take me to thy last lone home,
A shadow to a shade, that I may dwell
With thee for ever in the underworld;
For here on earth we shared alike, and now
I fain would die to share with thee thy tomb;
For with the dead there is no mourning, none.
Child of a mortal sire, Electra, think,
Orestes too was mortal; calm thy grief.
Death is a debt that all of us must pay.
Ah me! what shall I say where all words fail?
And yet I can no longer curb my tongue.
What sudden trouble made thee speak like this?
Is this the famed Electra I behold?
’Tis she, and very wretched is her state.
O for the heavy change! Alas, alas!
Surely thy pity, sir, is not for me.
O beauty marred by foul and impious spite!
Yea, sir, this wreck of womanhood am I.
Alas, how sad a life of singleness!
Why gaze thus on me, stranger, and lament?
Of my own ills how little then I knew!
Was this revealed by any word of mine?
By seeing thee conspicuous in thy woes.
And yet my looks reveal but half my woes.
Could there be woes more piteous to behold?
Yea, to be housemate with the murderers—
Whose murderers? at what villainy dost hint?
My father’s; and their
