CLYTAEMNESTRA.
Charge not on me this deed.
Imagine not that I
Am Agamemnon's queen.
Like to the dead man's wife
The fiend that vengeance takes
For Atreus' ghastly feast
Here hath repaid the debt,
A man for infants slain.
CHORUS.
Oh, whither can I turn,
In vain my mind I task.
The house thus wrecked, despair lies every way.
I shudder at this pouring rain of blood,
No more by drops it falls.
Fate for some other murderous deed
On a new whetstone sharpens her knife's edge.
Would earth had swallowed me
Ere in the silver vessel of the bath
I saw my king laid low.
Who will his funeral rites
Perform? Wilt thou be able unabashed,
Having thy husband slain,
To wail for him, and to his injured shade
Requital for such wrong
By unloved service pay?
CLYTAEMNESTRA.
Not unto thee belongs
This care. 'Twas we that slew,
And we will bury him.
Not from his house shall go
His mourning train.
By the swift-flowing stream
Of lamentation his loved child,
Iphigenia, shall her father meet,
Embrace and fondly kiss.
THE CHOEPHOROE
Electra, the daughter of Agamemnon, has been living beneath the hated domination of Aegisthus and Clytemnestra, the murderer and murderess of her father. Her brother Orestes, the avenger of blood and the hope of her house, has been living in banishment, while she has been looking and longing for his return. At length he returns with his faithful comrade Pylades, and intimates his presence by placing a lock of his hair as his offering on Agamemnon's tomb. Electra announces the discovery to the Chorus of Trojan women, who bear her libation for her to the tomb of her father, and from whom the play is named.
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