Page:The Dramas of Aeschylus (Swanwick).djvu/196

126

Ah me! this snake it is I bare and reared.

True prophet was thy dream-engendered fear.

Him thou didst slay whom thou shouldst not have slain.

So doom unseemly suffer in thy turn.

E'en of this pair I weep the twofold woe.

But since Orestes hath the bloody height

Achieved of dire revenge, one hope remains,

Not quenched the eye of Atreus' royal house.

Justice, in time, with heavy doom,

Smote all of Priam's name;

So Agamemnon, to thy home,

Twin Lions, twofold Ares, came:

Suppliant at Pythos' shrine,

By oracles divine,

Sped on his way, the exile wins the game.

Hail jubilant the house redeemed from bale!

The godless pair no more

Shall waste its gathered store.

Hail, joyous riddance, hail!