Page:Tragedies of Euripides (Way 1898) v3.djvu/126

98 Klytemnestra's couch, to Hellenes memorable.

To him were daughters three, Chrysothemis,

Iphigeneia, Electra, and a son

Orestes, of one impious mother born,

Who trapped in tangling toils her lord, and slew:

Wherefore she slew,—a shame for maid to speak!—

I leave untold, for whoso will to guess.

What boots it to lay wrong to Phœbus' charge,

Who thrust Orestes on to slay the mother

That bare him?—few but cry shame on the deed,

Though in obedience to the God he slew.

I in the deed shared,—far as woman might,—

And Pylades, who helped to compass it.

Thereafter, wasted with fierce malady,

Hapless Orestes, fallen on his couch,

Lieth: his mother's blood aye scourgeth him

With madness. Scarce for awe I name their names

Whose terrors rack him, the Eumenides.

And to this day, the sixth since cleansing fire

Enwrapped the murdered form, his mother's corse,

Morsel of food his lips have not received,

Nor hath he bathed his flesh; but in his cloak

Now palled, when he from torment respite hath,

With brain unclouded weeps, now from his couch

Frenzied with wild feet bounds like steed unyoked.

And Argos hath decreed that none with roof

Or fire receive us, none speak word to us,

The matricides. The appointed day is this,

Whereon the Argive state shall cast the vote,

Whether we twain must die, by stoning die,

Or through our own necks plunge the whetted steel.

Yet one hope have we of escape from death;

For Menelaus from Troy hath reached the land.