Page:Electra of Euripides (Murray 1913).djvu/84

68 As false within! What would she with a cheek

So bright in strange men's eyes, unless she seek

Some treason? None but I, thy child, could so

Watch thee in Hellas: none but I could know

Thy face of gladness when our enemies

Were strong, and the swift cloud upon thine eyes

If Troy seemed falling, all thy soul keen-set

Praying that he might come no more! And yet

It was so easy to be true. A king

Was thine, not feebler, not in anything

Below Aegisthus; one whom Hellas chose

For chief beyond all kings. Aye, and God knows,

How sweet a name in Greece, after the sin

Thy sister wrought, lay in thy ways to win.

Ill deeds make fair ones shine, and turn thereto

Men's eyes.—Enough: but say he wronged thee; slew

By craft thy child:—what wrong had I done, what

The babe Orestes? Why didst render not

Back unto us, the children of the dead,

Our father's portion? Must thou heap thy bed

With gold of murdered men, to buy to thee

Thy strange man's arms? Justice! Why is not he

Who cast Orestes out, cast out again?

Not slain for me whom doubly he hath slain,

In living death, more bitter than of old

My sister's? Nay, when all the tale is told

Of blood for blood, what murder shall we make,

I and Orestes, for our father's sake?

Aye, child; I know thy heart, from long ago.

Thou hast alway loved him best. 'Tis oft-time so:

One is her father's daughter, and one hot