Leader: 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.
Orestes: 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.
Leader: 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?
Orestes: ’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, 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! 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 Below his counsel shall afford And ope to me the strait way of the sword. Orestes and Pylades depart, Electra goes into the House.
Chorus: 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 mortals linkèd go The heart of a woman is perilous past all perils Of stars above or deeps below.
Strophe 2
Wist ye not, O light of mind, Her who slew her son with hate, Thestios’ daughter desolate, How she wrought All her thought To one counsel, fiery-blind, When she burned the brand of fate, That was twin to him and brother From the hour of that first cry When the babe came from the mother Till the strong man turned to die?
Antistrophe 2
Wist ye not one loathed of old, Who to win a foe did sell, Cruel, him who loved her well; Skylla, dyed with blood and pride, Who craved the rings of Cretan gold That Minos gave, too rich to tell; Like a wolf at night she came Where he lay with tranquil breath, And she cut the Crest of Flame: And, a-sudden, all was death.
Strophe 3
But o’er all terrors on man’s tongue The woman’s deed of Lemnos lies; It echoes, like an evil song, Far off, and whensoe’er there rise New and strange sins, in dire surmise, Men mind them of the Lemnian wrong. Yet surely by the Sin God’s eye Abhorreth, mortal man shall die, And all the glory that was his. For who shall lift that thing on high Which God abaseth? Not amiss I garner to my crown of woe These sins of Woman long ago.
Antistrophe 3
O lust so old, so hard of heart! I lose me in the stories told, Untimely. Have these walls no part In ravening of desire, as bold And evil as those deeds of old? The House with dread thereof doth start From dreaming. On, through woe or weal A woman brooding planned her path, Against a warrior robed in steel, And armies trembled at his wrath. And he is gone; and we must kneel On a cold hearth and bow in fear Before a woman’s trembling spear.
Strophe 4
Lo, the sword hovereth at the throat For Justice’ sake. It scorneth not What the proud man to earth has trod. Its edge is bitter to the bone; It stabbeth on, thro’ iron, thro’ stone, Till it reach him who hath forgot That Ruth which is the law of God.
Antistrophe 4
For Justice is an oak that yet Standeth; and Doom the Smith doth whet His blade in the dark. But what is this? A child led to the House from lands Far off, and blood upon his hands! The great Erinys wreaks her debt, Whose thought is as the vast abyss.
The scene now represents the front of the Palace of the Atridae, with one door leading to the main palace, another to the Women’s House. Dusk is approaching. Enter Orestes and Pylades, disguised as merchants from Phôkis, with Attendants.