Lines 400-799. Aeschylus. 1909-14. The Libation-Bearers. The Harvard Classics.

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Aeschylus (525–456 B.C.). The Libation-Bearers.
The Harvard Classics. 1909–14.

Lines 400–799


Strive and wrestle as we may,
Still stands doom invincible,

CHORUS Nay, if so he will, the god
Still our tears to joy can turn.	404
He can bid a triumph-ode
Drown the dirge beside this urn;
He to kingly halls can greet
The child restored, the homeward-guided feet.	408

ORESTES Ah my father! hadst thou lain
Under Ilion’s wall,
By some Lycian spearman slain,
Thou hadst left in this thine hall	412
Honour; thou hadst wrought for us
Fame and life most glorious.
Over-seas if thou hadst died,
Heavily had stood thy tomb,	416
Heaped on high; but, quenched in pride,
Grief were light unto thy home.

CHORUS Loved and honoured hadst thou lain
By the dead that nobly fell,	420
In the underworld again,
Where are throned the kings of hell,
Full of sway adorable
Thou hadst stood at their right hand—	424
Thou that wert, in mortal land,
By Fate’s ordinance and law,
King of kings who bear the crown
And the staff, to which in awe	428
Mortal men bow down.

ELECTRA Nay, O father, I were fain
Other fate had fallen on thee.
Ill it were if thou hadst lain	432
One among the common slain,
Fallen by Scamander’s side—
Those who slew thee there should be!
Then, untouched by slavery,	436
We had heard as from afar
Deaths of those who should have died
’Mid the chance of war.

CHORUS O child, forbear! things all too high thou sayest.	440
Easy, but vain, thy cry!
A boon above all gold is that thou prayest,
An unreached destiny,
As of the blessèd land that far aloof	444
Beyond the north wind lies;
Yet doth your double prayer ring loud reproof;
A double scourge of sighs
Awakes the dead; th’ avengers rise, though late;	448
Blood stains the guilty pride
Of the accursed who rule on earth, and Fate
Stands on the children’s side.

ELECTRA That hath sped thro’ mine ear, like a shaft from a bow!	452
Zeus, Zeus! it is thou who dost send from below
A doom on the desperate doer—ere long
On a mother a father shall visit his wrong.

CHORUS Be it mine to upraise thro’ the reek of the pyre	456
The chant of delight, while the funeral fire
Devoureth the corpse of a man that is slain
And a woman laid low!
For who bids me conceal it! outrending control,	460
Blows ever the stern blast of hate thro’ my soul,
And before me a vision of wrath and of bane
Flits and waves to and fro.

ORESTES Zeus, thou alone to us art parent now.	464
Smite with a rending blow
Upon their heads, and bid the land be well:
Set right where wrong hath stood; and thou give ear,
O Earth, unto my prayer—	468
Yea, hear, O mother Earth, and monarchy of hell!

CHORUS Nay, the law is sternly set—
Blood drops shed upon the ground
Plead for other bloodshed yet;	472
Loud the call of death doth sound,
Calling guilt of olden time,
A Fury, crowning crime with crime.

ELECTRA Where, where are ye, avenging powers,	476
Puissant Furies of the slain?
Behold the relics of the race
Of Atreus, thrust from pride of place!
O Zeus, what home henceforth is ours,	480
What refuge to attain?

CHORUS Lo, at your wail my heart throbs, wildly stirred;
Now am I lorn with sadness,
Darkened in all my soul, to hear your sorrow’s word.	484
Anon to hope, the seat of strength, I rise,—
She, thrusting grief away, lifts up mine eyes
To the new dawn of gladness.

ORESTES Skills it to tell of aught save wrong on wrong,	488
Wrought by our mother’s deed?
Though now she fawn for pardon, sternly strong
Standeth our wrath, and will nor hear nor heed;
Her children’s soul is wolfish, born from hers,	492
And softens not by prayers.

CHORUS I dealt upon my breast the blow
That Asian mourning women know;
Wails from my breast the fun’ral cry,	496
The Cissian weeping melody;
Stretched rendingly forth, to tatter and tear,
My clenched hands wander, here and there,
From head to breast; distraught with blows	500
Throb dizzily my brows.

ELECTRA Aweless in hate, O mother, sternly brave!
As in a foeman’s grave
Thou laid’st in earth a king, but to the bier	504
No citizen drew near,—
Thy husband, thine, yet for his obsequies,
Thou bad’st no wail arise!

ORESTES Alas, the shameful burial thou dost speak!	508
Yet I the vengeance of his shame will wreak—
That do the gods command!
That shall achieve mine hand!
Grant me to thrust her life away, and I	512
Will dare to die!

CHORUS List thou the deed! Hewn down and foully torn,
He to the tomb was borne;
Yea, by her hand, the deed who wrought,	516
With like dishonour to the grave was brought,
And by her hand she strove, with strong desire,
Thy life to crush, O child, by murder of thy sire:
Bethink thee, hearing, of the shame, the pain	520
Wherewith that sire was slain!

ELECTRA Yea, such was the doom of my sire; well-a-day,
I was thrust from his side,—
As a dog from the chamber they thrust me away,	524
And in place of my laughter rose sobbing and tears,
As in darkness I lay.
O father, if this word can pass to thine ears,
To thy soul let it reach and abide!	528

CHORUS Let it pass, let it pierce, thro’ the sense of thine ear,
To thy soul, where in silence it waiteth the hour!
The past is accomplished; but rouse thee to hear
What the future prepareth; wake and appear,	532
Our champion, in wrath and in power!

ORESTES O father, to thy loved ones come in aid.

ELECTRA With tears I call on thee.

CHORUS Listen and rise to light!	536
Be thou with us, be thou against the foe!
Swiftly this cry arises—even so
Pray we, the loyal band, as we have prayed!

ORESTES Let their might meet with mine, and their right with my right.	540

ELECTRA O ye gods, it is yours to decree.

CHORUS Ye call unto the dead; I quake to hear.
Fate is ordained of old, and shall fulfil your prayer.

ELECTRA Alas, the inborn curse that haunts our home,	544
Of Atè’s bloodstained scourge the tuneless sound!
Alas, deep insufferable doom,
The stanchless wound!

ORESTES It shall be stanched, the task is ours,—	548
Not by a stranger’s, but by kindred hand,
Shall be chased forth the blood-fiend of our land.
Be this our spoken spell, to call Earth’s nether powers!

CHORUS Lords of a dark eternity,	552
To you has come the children’s cry,
Send up from hell, fulfil your aid
To them who prayed.

ORESTES O father, murdered in unkingly wise,	556
Fulfil my prayer, grant me thine halls to sway.

ELECTRA To me, too, grant this boon—dark death to deal
Unto Ægisthus, and to ’scape my doom.

ORESTES So shall the rightful feasts that mortals pay	560
Be set for thee; else, not for thee shall rise
The scented reek of altars fed with flesh,
But thou shalt lie dishonoured: hear thou me!

ELECTRA I too, from my full heritage restored,	564
Will pour the lustral streams, what time I pass
Forth as a bride from these paternal halls,
And honour first, beyond all graves, thy tomb.

ORESTES Earth, send my sire to fend me in the fight!	568

ELECTRA Give fair-faced fortune, O Persephone!

ORESTES Bethink thee, father, in the laver slain—

ELECTRA Bethink thee of the net they handselled for thee!

ORESTES Bonds not of brass ensnared thee, father mine.	572

ELECTRA Yea, the ill craft of an enfolding robe.

ORESTES By this our bitter speech arise, O sire!

ELECTRA Raise thou thine head at love’s last, dearest call!

ORESTES Yea, speed forth Right to aid thy kinsmen’s cause;	576
Grip for grip, let them grasp the foe, if thou
Willest in triumph to forget thy fall.

ELECTRA Hear me, O father, once again hear me.
Lo! at thy tomb, two fledglings of thy brood—	580
A man-child and a maid; hold them in ruth,
Nor wipe them out, the last of Pelops’ line.
For while they live, thou livest from the dead;
Children are memory’s voices, and preserve	584
The dead from wholly dying: as a net
Is ever by the buoyant corks upheld,
Which save the flex-mesh, in the depth submerged.
Listen, this wail of ours doth rise for thee,	588
And as thou heedest it thyself art saved.

CHORUS In sooth, a blameless prayer ye spake at length—
The tomb’s requital for its dirge denied:
Now, for the rest, as thou art fixed to do,	592
Take fortune by the hand and work thy will.

ORESTES The doom is set; and yet I fain would ask—
Not swerving from the course of my resolve,—
Wherefore she sent these offerings, and why	596
She softens all too late her cureless deed?
An idle boon it was, to send them here
Unto the dead who recks not of such gifts.
I cannot guess her thought, but well I ween	600
Such gifts are skilless to atone such crime.
Be blood once spilled, and idle strife he strives
Who seeks with other wealth or wine outpoured
To atone the deed. So stands the word, nor fails.	604
Yet would I know her thought; speak, if thou knowest.

CHORUS I know it, son; for at her side I stood.
’Twas the night-wandering terror of a dream
That flung her shivering from her couch, and bade her—	608
Her, the accursed of God—these offerings send.

ORESTES Heard ye the dream, to tell it forth aright?

CHORUS Yea, from herself; her womb a serpent bare.

ORESTES What then the sum and issue of the tale?	612

CHORUS Even as a swaddled child, she lull’d the thing.

ORESTES What suckling craved the creature, born full-fanged?

CHORUS Yet in her dreams she proffered it the breast.

ORESTES How? did the hateful thing not bite her teat?	616

CHORUS Yea, and sucked forth a blood-gout in the milk.

ORESTES Not vain this dream—it bodes a man’s revenge.

CHORUS Then out of sleep she started with a cry,
And thro’ the palace for their mistress’ aid	620
Full many lamps, that erst lay blind with night,
Flared into light; then, even as mourners use,
She sends these offerings, in hope to win
A cure to cleave and sunder sin from doom.	624

ORESTES Earth and my father’s grave, to you I call—
Give this her dream fulfilment, and thro’ me.
I read it in each part coincident
With what shall be; for mark, that serpent sprang	628
From the same womb as I, in swaddling bands
By the same hands was swathed, lipped the same breast,
And sucking forth the same sweet mother’s-milk
Infused a clot of blood; and in alarm	632
She cried upon her wound the cry of pain.
The rede is clear: the thing of dread she nursed,
The death of blood she dies; and I, ’tis I,
In semblance of a serpent, that must slay her.	636
Thou art my seer, and thus I read the dream.

CHORUS So do; yet ere thou doest, speak to us,
Bidding some act, some, by not acting, aid.

ORESTES Brief my command: I bid my sister pass	640
In silence to the house, and all I bid
This my design with wariness conceal,
That they who did by craft a chieftain slay
May by like craft and in like noose be ta’en,	644
Dying the death which Loxias foretold—
Apollo, king and prophet undisproved.
I with this warrior Pylades will come
In likeness of a stranger, full equipt	648
As travellers come, and at the palace gates
Will stand, as stranger, yet in friendship’s bond
Unto this house allied; and each of us
Will speak the tongue that round Parnassus sounds,	652
Feigning such speech as Phocian voices use.
And what if none of those that tend the gates
Shall welcome us with gladness, since the house
With ills divine is haunted? if this hap,	656
We at the gate will bide, till, passing by,
Some townsman make conjecture and proclaim,
How? is Ægisthus here, and knowingly
Keeps suppliants aloof, by bolt and bar?	660
Then shall I win my way; and if I cross
The threshold of the gate, the palace’ guard,
And find him throned where once my father sat—
Or if he come anon, and face to face	664
Confronting, drop his eyes from mine—I swear
He shall not utter, Who art thou and whence?
Ere my steel leap, and compassed round with death
Low he shall lie: and thus, full-fed with doom,	668
The Fury of the house shall drain once more
A deep third draught of rich unmingled blood.
But thou, O sister, look that all within
Be well prepared to give these things event.	672
And ye—I say ’twere well to bear a tongue
Full of fair silence and of fitting speech
As each beseems the time; and last, do thou,
Hermes the warder-god, keep watch and ward,	676
And guide to victory my striving sword. [Exit with Pylades.

CHORUS Many and marvellous the things of fear
Earth’s breast doth bear;
And the sea’s lap with many monsters teems,	680
And windy levin-bolts and meteor-gleams
Breed many deadly things—
Unknown and flying forms, with fear upon their wings,
And in their tread is death;	684
And rushing whirlwinds, of whose blasting breath
Man’s tongue can tell.
But who can tell aright the fiercer thing,
The aweless soul, within man’s breast inhabiting?	688
Who tell, how, passion-fraught and love-distraught,
The woman’s eager, craving thought
Doth wed mankind to woe and ruin fell?
Yea, how the loveless love that doth possess	692
The woman, even as the lioness,
Doth rend and wrest apart, with eager strife,
The link of wedded life?

Let him be the witness, whose thought is not borne on light wings thro’ the air,	696
But abideth with knowledge, what thing was wrought by Althea’s despair;
For she marr’d the life-grace of her son, with ill counsel rekindled the flame
That was quenched as it glowed on the brand, what time from his mother he came,
With the cry of a new-born child; and the brand from the burning she won,	700
For the Fates had foretold it coeval, in life and in death, with her son.

Yea, and man’s hate tells of another, even Scylla of murderous guile,
Who slew for an enemy’s sake her father, won o’er by the wile
And the gifts of Cretan Minos, the gauds of the high-wrought gold;	704
For she clipped from her father’s head the lock that should never wax old,
As he breathed in the silence of sleep, and knew not her craft and her crime—
But Hermes, the guard of the dead, doth grasp her, in fulness of time.

And since of the crimes of the cruel I tell, let my singing record	708
The bitter wedlock and loveless, the curse on these halls outpoured
The crafty device of a woman, whereby did a chieftain fall,
A warrior stern in his wrath, the fear of his enemies all,—
A song of dishonour, untimely! and cold is the hearth that was warm,	712
And ruled by the cowardly spear, the woman’s unwomanly arm.

But the summit and crown of all crimes is that which in Lemnos befel;
A woe and a mourning it is, a shame and a spitting to tell;
And he that in aftertime doth speak of his deadliest thought,	716
Doth say, It is like to the deed that of old time in Lemnos was wrought;
And loathed of men were the doers, and perished, they and their seed,
For the gods brought hate upon them; none loveth the impious deed.

It is well of these tales to tell; for the sword in the grasp of Right	720
With a cleaving, a piercing blow to the innermost heart doth smite,
And the deed unlawfully done is not trodden down nor forgot,
When the sinner outsteppeth the law and heedeth the high God not;
But Justice hath planted the anvil, and Destiny forgeth the sword	724
That shall smite in her chosen time; by her is the child restored;
And, darkly devising, the Fiend of the house, world-cursed, will repay
The price of the blood of the slain that was shed in the bygone day. [Enter Orestes and Pylades, in guise of travellers.

ORESTES (knocking at the palace gate) What ho! slave, ho! I smite the palace gate	728
In vain, it seems; what ho, attend within,—
Once more, attend; come forth and ope the halls,
If yet Ægisthus holds them hospitable.

SLAVE (from within) Anon, anon! [Opens the door.	732
Speak, from what land art thou, and sent from whom?

ORESTES Go, tell to them who rule the palace halls,
Since ’tis to them I come with tidings new—
(Delay not—Night’s dark car is speeding on,	736
And time is now for wayfarers to cast
Anchor in haven, wheresoe’er a house
Doth welcome strangers)—that there now come forth
Some one who holds authority within—	740
The queen, or, if some man, more seemly were it;
For when man standeth face to face with man,
No stammering modesty confounds their speech,
But each to each doth tell his meaning clear. [Enter Clytemnestra.	744

CLYTEMNESTRA Speak on, O strangers; have ye need of aught?
Here is whate’er beseems a house like this—
Warm bath and bed, tired Nature’s soft restorer,
And courteous eyes to greet you; and if aught	748
Of graver import needeth act as well,
That, as man’s charge, I to a man will tell.

ORESTES A Daulian man am I, from Phocis bound,
And as with mine own travel-scrip self-laden	752
I went toward Argos, parting hitherward
With travelling foot, there did encounter me
One whom I knew not and who knew not me,
But asked my purposed way nor hid his own,	756
And, as we talked together, told his name—
Strophius of Phocis; then he said, “Good sir,
Since in all case thou art to Argos bound,
Forget not this my message, heed it well,	760
Tell to his own, Orestes is no more.
And—whatsoe’er his kinsfolk shall resolve,
Whether to bear his dust unto his home,
Or lay him here, in death as erst in life	764
Exiled for aye, a child of banishment—
Bring me their hest, upon thy backward road;
For now in brazen compass of an urn
His ashes lie, their dues of weeping paid.”	768
So much I heard, and so much tell to thee,
Not knowing if I speak unto his kin
Who rule his home; but well, I deem, it were,
Such news should earliest reach a parent’s ear.	772

CLYTEMNESTRA Ah woe is me! thy word our ruin tells;
From roof-tree unto base are we despoiled.—
O thou whom nevermore we wrestle down,
Thou Fury of this home, how oft and oft	776
Thou dost descry what far aloof is laid,
Yea, from afar dost bend th’ unerring bow
And rendest from my wretchedness its friends;
As now Orestes—who, a brief while since,	780
Safe from the mire of death stood warily,—
Was the home’s hope to cure th’ exulting wrong;
Now thou ordainest, Let the ill abide.

ORESTES To host and hostess thus with fortune blest,	784
Lief had I come with better news to bear
Unto your greeting and acquaintanceship;
For what goodwill lies deeper than the bond
Of guest and host? and wrong abhorred it were,	788
As well I deem, if I, who pledged my faith
To one, and greetings from the other had,
Bore not aright the tidings ’twixt the twain.

CLYTEMNESTRA Whate’er thy news, thou shalt not welcome lack,	792
Meet and deserved, nor scant our grace shall be.
Hadst thou thyself not come, such tale to tell,
Another, sure, had borne it to our ears.
But lo! the hour is here when travelling guests,	796
Fresh from the daylong labour of the road,
Should win their rightful due. Take him within [To the slave.
To the man-chamber’s hospitable rest—

CONTENTS · BOOK CONTENTS · BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD · DRAMATIS PERSONÆ

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