Clytemnestra: Cast out? I sent thee to a war-friend’s Hall.
Orestes: A free man’s heir, ye sold me like a thrall.
Clytemnestra: If thou wast sold, where is the price I got?
Orestes: The price! … For very shame I speak it not.
Clytemnestra: Speak. But tell, too, thy father’s harlotries.
Orestes: Judge not the toiler, thou who sitt’st at ease!
Clytemnestra: A woman starves with no man near, my son.
Orestes: Her man’s toil wins her bread when he is gone.
Clytemnestra: To kill thy mother, Child: is that thy will?
Orestes: I kill thee not: thyself it is doth kill.
Clytemnestra: A mother hath her Watchers: think and quail!
Orestes: How shall I ’scape my Father’s if I fail?
Clytemnestra: To herself.
Living, I cry for mercy to a tomb!
Orestes: Yea, from the grave my father speaks thy doom.
Clytemnestra: Ah God! The serpent that I bare and fed!
Orestes: Surely of truth prophetic is the dread That walketh among dreams. Most sinfully Thou slewest: now hath Sin her will of thee. He drives Clytemnestra before him into the Palace. The Chorus come forward again.
Leader: For these twain also in their fall I weep. Yet, seeing Orestes now through mire so deep Hath climbed the crest, I can but pray this eye Of the Great House be not made blind and die.
Chorus: Strophe 1
Judgment came in the end To Troy and the Trojans’ lord, (O Vengeance, heavy to fall!) There came upon Atreus’ Hall Lion and lion friend, A sword came and a sword. A walker in Pytho’s way On the neck of her kings hath trod, A beggar and outcast, yea, But led by God.
Antistrophe 1
Came He of the laughing lure, The guile and the secret blow, (O Vengeance, subtle to slay!) But there held his hand that day The Daughter of Zeus, the pure, Justice yclept below. Justice they called her name, For where is a goodlier? And her breath is a sword of flame On the foes of her.
All: Cry, Ho for the perils fled, For the end of the long dismay! Cry, Ho for peace and bread; For the Castle’s lifted head, For the two defilers dead, And the winding of Fortune’s way!
Strophe 2
Even as Apollo gave His charge on the Mountain, He Who holdeth the Earth-heart Cave, Hast thou wrought innocently Great evil, hindered long, Tracking thy mother’s sin … Is the power of God hemmed in So strangely to work with wrong? Howbeit, let praise be given To that which is throned in Heaven: The Gods are strong.