Page:Sophocles - Seven Plays, 1900.djvu/191

944–981]

. So it make profit, I will not refuse.

. Remember, without toil no plan may thrive!

. I know it, and will aid thee to my power.

. Then hearken my resolve. Thou seest now,

We have no friendly succour in the world;

But death has taken all, and we are left

Two only. I, so long as I could hear

My brother lived and flourished, still had hope

He would arise to wreak his father’s blood.

But now that he is gone, to thee I turn,

To help thy sister boldly to destroy

The guilty author of our father’s death,

Aegisthus.—Wherefore hide it from thee now?

—Yea, sister! Till what term wilt thou remain

Inactive? To what end? What hope is yet

Left standing? Surely thou hast cause to grieve,

Robbed of thy father’s opulent heritage,

And feeling bitterly the creeping years

That find thee still a virgin and unwed.

Nay, nor imagine thou shalt ever know

That blessing. Not so careless of his life

Is King Aegisthus, as to risk the birth

Of sons from us, to his most certain fall.

But if thou wilt but follow my resolve,

First thou shalt win renown of piety

From our dead father, and our brother too,

Who rest beneath the ground, and shalt be free

For evermore in station as in birth,

And nobly matched in marriage, for the good

Draw gazers to them still. Then seest thou not

What meed of honour, if thou dost my will,

Thou shalt apportion to thyself and me?

For who, beholding us, what citizen,

What foreigner, will not extend the hand

Of admiration, and exclaim, ‘See, friends,

These scions of one stock, these noble twain,

These that have saved their father’s house from woe,

Who once when foes were mighty, set their life

Upon a cast, and stood forth to avenge

The stain of blood! Who will not love the pair