Page:Electra of Euripides (Murray 1913).djvu/73

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O conqueror, come! The king that trampled Troy

Knoweth his son Orestes. Come in joy,

Brother, and take to bind thy rippling hair

My crowns! O what are crowns, that runners wear

For some vain race? But thou in battle true

Hast felled our foe Aegisthus, him that slew

By craft thy sire and mine.

And thou no less,

O friend at need, O reared in righteousness,

Take, Pylades, this chaplet from my hand.

'Twas half thy battle. And may ye two stand

Thus alway, victory-crowned, before my face! [She crowns.

Electra, first as workers of this grace

Praise thou the Gods, and after, if thou will,

Praise also me, as chosen to fulfil

God's work and Fate's.—Aye, 'tis no more a dream;

In very deed I come from slaying him.

Thou hast the knowledge clear, but lo, I bring

More also. See himself, dead!

Wouldst thou fling

This lord on the rotting earth for beasts to tear?

Or up, where all the vultures of the air

May glut them, pierce and nail him for a sign

Far off? Work all thy will. Now he is thine.