Works of Aeschylus - Aeschylus [27]
Orestes:
Let their might meet with mine, and their right with my right.
Electra:
O ye Gods, it is yours to decree.
Chorus of Slave Women:
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 Ate'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 of Slave Women:
Lords of a dark eternity,
To you has come the children's cry,
Send up from hell, fulfil your aid
To them who prayed.
The chant is concluded.
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 shalt 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 flax-mesh, in the depth submerged.
Listen, this wail of ours doth rise for thee,
And as thou heedest it thyself art saved.
Leader of the 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.
Leader of the 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?
Leader of the Chorus:
Yea, from herself; her womb a serpent bare.
Orestes:
What then the sum and issue of the tale?
Leader of the Chorus:
Even as a swaddled child, she lull'd the thing.
Orestes:
What suckling craved the creature, born full-fanged?
Leader of the Chorus:
Yet in her dreams she proffered it the breast.
Orestes:
How? did the hateful thing not bite her teat?
Leader of the Chorus:
Yea, and sucked forth a blood-gout in the milk.
Orestes:
Not vain this dream-it bodes a man's revenge.