Page:Tragedies of Euripides (Way 1896) v2.djvu/240

184 The spring is from yon cot. I at the dawn

Will drive my team afield and sow the glebe.

None idle—though his lips aye prate of Gods—

Can gather without toil a livelihood.

[Exeunt Peasant and Electra.

Enter Orestes and Pylades.

Pylades, foremost thee of men I count

In loyalty, love, and friendship unto me.

Sole of Orestes' friends, thou honouredst me

In this my plight, wronged foully by Aegisthus,

Who, with my utter-baneful mother, slew

My sire. At Phœbus' oracle-hest I come

To Argos' soil, none privy thereunto,

To pay my father's murderers murder-wage.

This night o'erpast to my sire's tomb I went;

There tears I gave and offerings of shorn hair,

And a slain sheep's blood poured upon the grave,

Unmarked of despot-rulers of this land.

And now I set not foot within their walls,

But blending two assays in one I come

To this land's border,—that to another soil

Forth I may flee, if any watch and know me;

To seek withal my sister,—for she dwells

In wedlock yoked, men say, nor bides a maid,—

To meet her, for the vengeance win her help,

And that which passeth in the city learn.

Now—for the Dawn uplifteth her bright eyne—

Step we a little from this path aside.