—Like a raven swoln with hate He hath set on the dead his claw, He croaketh a song to sate His fury, and calls it Law!
Clytemnestra: Ah, call upon Him! Yea, call— And thy thought hath found its path— The Daemon who haunts this hall, The thrice-engorged Wrath;
From him is the ache of the flesh For blood born and increased; Ere the old sore hath ceased It oozeth afresh.
Chorus: —Indeed He is very great, And heavy his anger, He, The Daemon who guides the fate Of the old Tantalidae: Alas, alas, an evil tale ye tell Of desolate angers and insatiable!
—Ah me, And yet ’tis all as Zeus hath willed, Doer of all and Cause of all; By His Word every chance doth fall, No end without Him is fulfilled; What of these things But cometh by high Heaven’s counsellings? A band of Mourners has gathered within the House.
Mourners: Ah, sorrow, sorrow! My King, my King! How shall I weep, what word shall I say? Caught in the web of this spider thing, In foul death gasping thy life away! Woe’s me, woe’s me, for this slavish lying, The doom of craft and the lonely dying, The iron two-edged and the hands that slay!
Clytemnestra: And criest thou still this deed hath been My work? Nay, gaze, and have no thought That this is Agamemnon’s Queen. ’Tis He, ’tis He, hath round him wrought This phantom of the dead man’s wife; He, the old Wrath, the Driver of Men astray, Pursuer of Atreus for the feast defiled; To assoil an ancient debt he hath paid this life; A warrior and a crownèd King this day Atones for a slain child.
Chorus: —That thou art innocent herein, What tongue dare boast? It cannot be, Yet from the deeps of ancient sin The Avenger may have wrought with thee.
—On the red Slayer crasheth, groping wild For blood, more blood, to build his peace again, And wash like water the old frozen stain Of the torn child.
Mourners: Ah, sorrow, sorrow! My King, my King! How shall I weep, what word shall I say? Caught in the web of this spider thing, In foul death gasping thy life away. Woe’s me, woe’s me, for this slavish lying, The doom of craft and the lonely dying, The iron two-edged and the hands that slay!
Clytemnestra: And what of the doom of craft that first He planted, making the House accurst? What of the blossom, from this root riven, Iphigenia, the unforgiven? Even as the wrong was, so is the pain: He shall not laugh in the House of the slain, When the count is scored; He hath but spoilèd and paid again The due of the sword.
Chorus: I am lost; my mind dull-eyed Knows not nor feels Whither to fly nor hide While the House reels. The noise of rain that falls On the roof affrighteth me, Washing away the walls; Rain that falls bloodily.
Doth ever the sound abate? Lo, the next Hour of Fate Whetting her vengeance due On new whet-stones, for new Workings of hate.
Mourners: Would thou hadst covered me, Earth, O Earth, Or e’er I had looked on my lord thus low, In the pallèd marble of silvern girth! What hands may shroud him, what tears may flow?
Not thine, O Woman who dared to slay him, Thou durst not weep to him now, nor pray him, Nor pay to his soul the deep unworth Of gift or prayer to forget thy blow.
—Oh, who with heart sincere Shall bring praise or grief To lay on the sepulchre Of the great chief?
Clytemnestra: His burial is not thine to array. By me he fell, by me he died, I watch him to the grave, not cried By mourners of his housefolk; nay,
His own child for a day like this Waits, as is seemly, and shall run By the white waves of Acheron To fold him in her arms and kiss!
Chorus: Lo, she who was erst reviled Revileth; and who shall say? Spoil taken from them that spoiled, Life-blood from them that slay! Surely while God ensueth His laws, while Time doth run ’Tis written: On him that doeth It shall be done.
This is God’s law and grace, Who then shall hunt the race Of curses from out this hall? The House is sealed withal To dreadfulness.
Clytemnestra: Aye, thou hast found the Law, and stept In Truth’s way.—Yet even now I call The Living Wrath which haunts this hall To truce and compact. I accept
All the affliction he doth heap Upon me, and I charge him go Far off with his self-murdering woe To strange men’s houses. I will keep
Some little dower, and leave behind All else, contented utterly. I have swept the madness from the sky Wherein these brethren slew their kind. As she ceases, exhausted and with the fire gone out of her, Aigisthos, with Attendants, bursts triumphantly in.
Aigisthos: O shining day, O dawn of righteousness Fulfilled! Now, now indeed will I confess That divine watchers o’er man’s death and birth Look down on all the anguish of the earth, Now that I see him lying, as I love To see him, in this net the Furies wove, To atone the old craft of his father’s hand.
For Atreus, this man’s father, in this land Reigning, and by Thyestes in his throne Challenged—he was his brother and mine own Father From home and city cast him out; And he, after long exile, turned about And threw him suppliant on the hearth, and won Promise of so much mercy, that his own Life-blood should reek not in his father’s hall. Then did that godless brother, Atreus, call,