Page:Tragedies of Euripides (Way 1896) v2.djvu/297

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''Woe! wretched I!''

I too could wail one by her children slain.

God meteth justice out in justice' day.

Ghastly thy sufferings; foully didst thou slay

Thy lord for thine own bane!

They come, they come! Lo, forth the house they set

Their feet, besprent with gouts of mother's blood,

Trophies that witness to her piteous cries.

There is no house more whelmed in misery,

Nor hath been, than the line of Tantalus.

Enter Orestes with Electra.

Earth, Zeus, whose all-beholding eye

Is over men, behold this deed

Of blood, of horror—these that lie

Twinned corpses on the earth, that bleed

For my wrongs, and by mine hand die.

[Woe and alas! I weep to know

My mother by mine hand laid low!]

Well may we weep!—it was my sin, brother!

My fury was kindled as flame against her from whose womb I came.

Woe's me, a daughter!—and this, my mother!