Page:House of Atreus 2nd ed (1889).djvu/163

Rh Not as of old, but bringing fairer doom.

Lo, freedom's light hath come!

[The scene opens, disclosing Orestes standing over the corpses of Ægisthus and Clytemnestra; in one hand he holds his sword, in the other the robe in which Agamemnon was entangled and slain.

There lies our country's twofold tyranny,

My father's slayers, spoilers of my home.

Erst were they royal, sitting on the throne,

And loving are they yet,—their common fate

Tells the tale truly, shows their trothplight firm.

They swore to work mine ill-starred father's death,

They swore to die together; 'tis fulfilled.

O ye who stand, this great doom's witnesses,

Behold this too, the dark device which bound

My sire unhappy to his death,—behold

The mesh which trapped his hands, enwound his feet!

Stand round, unfold it—'tis the trammel-net

That wrapped a chieftain; hold it that he see,

The father—not my sire, but he whose eye

Is judge of all things, the all-seeing Sun!

Let him behold my mother's damnèd deed,

Then let him stand, when need shall be to me,

Witness that justly I have sought and slain

My mother; blameless was Ægisthus' doom—

He died the death law bids adulterers die.

But she who plotted this accursèd thing

To slay her lord, by whom she bare beneath

Her girdle once the burden of her babes,

Beloved erewhile, now turned to hateful foes—

What deem ye of her? or what venomed thing,