The foul murder of our sire;

And send my brother back again;

Else I may no more sustain

Grief’s overmastering weight.

Enter Chorus of Ladies of Mycenœ.

CHORUS.

O child, Electra, child

Of one too fatally bold,

How sighest thou, unsatisfied yet,

Evermore wasting away,

For him, Agamemnon, beguiled

By thy crafty mother of old,

Spite of all Gods, in her net,

To base hands given for a prey?

Accurst be the author of this!

If I pray not amiss.

ELECTRA.

O women of noble strain,

Ye are come to solace my pain;

I know it, I well perceive;

It escapes me not at all;

Howbeit I will not leave

To lament my father’s fall.

Ye my love who repay

With all love ever gave,

Ah let me be, I pray,

Leave me to rave.

CHORUS.

But not from Hades below,

Not from the all-welcoming shore,

Even with strong crying and prayer

Canst thou raise thy father again.

Past all measure in woe

Thou art perishing evermore,

Sinking deep in despair,

Where no release is from pain;

Ah why so bent upon grief,

Too sore for relief?

ELECTRA.

None but fools could forget

Their fathers’ wrongs, who are gone.

But on her my fancy is set,

The bird, Heaven’s messenger,

Wildly bemoaning her

For Itys, Itys alone!

O forlorn Niobe,*

As one godlike I deem of thee,

Alas! that abidest, weeping,

In a rock-tomb’s keeping!

CHORUS.

Not first of mortals with thee,

Daughter, did sorrow begin;

Whereas thou passest the rest,

Thy kith and kindred within,

The life Chrysothemis lives,

And Iphianassa, and he

In the flower of his youth who grieves,

Hid, but not all unblest,

Whom the land, Mycenæ fair,

Will receive, her princes’ heir,

When he, Orestes, shall come

By Heaven’s guidance home.

ELECTRA.

Whom I wait for, and go

Ceaselessly wet with tears,

Unespoused, childless, forlorn,

Bearing still, as I must,

The unending burden of woe;

But he forgets with the years

All he has heard and borne;

For what message comes I can trust?

Ever he longs to be here —

He will not appear!

CHORUS.

Nay cheer thee, cheer thee, my child;

God in the Heaven’s is yet great,

Who surveys all else and commands.

Leave thou then in his hands

Anger — the excess of regret,

Nor chide overmuch — nor forget

Those whom thou needs must hate.

For Time is a God right mild;

Nor can Agamemnon’s son

By Crisa’s pastoral shore,

Nor the monarch of Acheron,

Be deaf evermore.

ELECTRA.

But already most of my day,

Hopeless, has faded away;

I can do no longer withal;

Without parents to cherish me I waste,

Without husband’s love, to defend;

Yea alien-like, disgraced,

I inhabit my father’s hall,

And in this guise attend

At a board with no feast laid,

Uncomely arrayed.

CHORUS.

At his return arose

A burden of woes — of woes

To thy father’s resting-place,

What time was darted a thrust,

From fangs all brass, at his face.

Fraud was deviser —Lust