Left in alone, he launches a shrill whoop

Through his fleet coursers’ ears, and races him,

And yoke and yoke the couple drove along,

Now one and now the other shewing head

Out in the front, over their carriages.

Well, all his rounds, poor fellow, till the last,

He stood up straight, and kept his chariot straight,

And drove straight through; then, slackening the left rein

As his horse turns, he struck unwittingly

The corner of the mark, and snapped the nave

Short from the axle, and slipped instantly

Over the rail, and in the cloven reins

Was tangled; as upon the plain he fell,

His steeds into the middle of the course

Ran all astray. Then the whole host, that saw him

Precipitated from the driving-board,

Lifted their voices to bewail the youth

Who did such feats, and met with such hard fate,

Now dashed upon the ground, now seen with limbs

All upward flung to heaven; till chariot-men

Hardly restrained the steeds in their career,

And loosed him, bathed in blood, so that no friend,

Seeing the poor body, could have known ‘twas he.

Then certain Phocians, ordered for the task,

Straightway consumed it on a funeral pile,

And hither in a little urn they bring

That mighty stature, in poor embers now,

To win a tomb in his own father’s land.

Such is my tale; right piteous in the telling;

But in the sight of us, who witnessed it,

The saddest thing of all I ever saw.

I LADY.

Alack, the lineage of our lords of old

Is all, too plainly, ruined from the root.

CLYTÆMNESTRA.

O God, this fortune —shall I call it fair,

Or black, though profitable? yet is it hard

That I should save my own life, through misfortunes

Which are my own!

GUARDIAN.

Why thus regretful, lady,

At what I have just told you?

CLYTÆMNESTRA.

It is strange —

This motherhood; for sons of one’s own bearing,

However ill entreated at their hands,

One cannot muster hatred.

GUARDIAN.

I am come,

It seems, in vain.

CLYTÆMNESTRA.

Nay indeed, not in vain.

Why should you say in vain? if you are come

With a sure token that the man is dead,

Who was indeed the offspring of my being,

But from this bosom and maternal care

Revolted, and became as one estranged,

An exile; never, from the day he left

This country, saw me more; but, laying to me

His father’s death, was ever threatening me,

So that sweet sleep by neither night nor day

Would cover me, but the impending hour

Held me continually in fear of death;

While now, since I am this day freed from terror

Of him, and of her too —for she dwelt with me

A far worse canker, ever draining deep

My very life-blood — now, for all her menaces,

I shall dwell tranquil!

ELECTRA.

O me miserable!

Why now, Orestes, there is room enough

To groan for thy misfortune, when, being thus,

Thou art scorned by this thy mother! Is it well?