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So do; yet ere thou doest, speak to us,

Bidding some act, some, by not acting, aid.

Brief my command: I bid my sister pass

In silence to the house, and all I bid

This my design with wariness conceal,

That they who did by craft a chieftain slay

May by like craft and in like noose be ta'en,

Dying the death which Loxias foretold—

Apollo, king and prophet undisproved.

I with this warrior Pylades will come

In likeness of a stranger, fall equipt

As travellers come, and at the palace gates

Will stand, as stranger yet in friendship's bond

Unto this house allied; and each of us

Will speak the tongue that round Parnassus sounds,

Feigning such speech as Phocian voices use.

And what if none of those that tend the gates

Shall welcome us with gladness, since the house

With ills divine is haunted? if this hap,

We at the gate will bide, till, passing by,

Some townsman make conjecture and proclaim

''How? is Ægisthus here, and knowingly''

Keeps suppliants aloof, by bolt and bar?

Then shall I win my way; and if I cross

The threshold of the gate, the palace' guard,

And find him throned where once my father sat—

Or if he come anon, and face to face

Confronting, drop his eyes from mine—I swear

He shall not utter, Who art thou and whence?

Ere my steel leap, and compassed round with death

Low he shall lie: and thus, full-fed with doom,

The Fury of the house shall drain once more