Ch. He is sleeping, and you rightly caution us.
El. Holy mother, mother Night!
Thou who sheddest sleep on every wearied wight!
Arise from Erebus, arise
With plumy pinions light:
Hover o'er the house of Atreus; and upon our aching eyes,
Wearied with woe,
With grief brought low,
Solace bring 'mid miseries.
Silence! Hush! what noise was this?
Can you ne'er your tongue restrain,
And allow soft slumber's kiss
To refresh his fevered brain?
Ch. Tell me, lady, what the close
Of his grief is like to be?
El. Death. Nought else will end his woes.
Lo, he fasts continually.
Ch. Alas! Alas! his fate is sure.
El. By the promise to make pure
Hands a mother's life-blood stained,
Phœbus brought
Woe, and wrought
All the grief that we have gained.
Ch. Just it was to slay the slayer; yet the deed with crime was fraught.
El. Thou art dead: oh, thou art dead,
Mother, who didst bear me! mother, who didst shed
A father's blood, and slay
The children of thy bed!
We are dying, we are dying, like the dead, and weak as they:
For thou art gone,
And I am wan,
Weeping, sighing night and day!
Look upon me, friends, behold
How my withered life must run,
Childless, homeless, sad and cold,
Comfortless beneath the sun.
Ch. Come hither, maid Electra, to the couch:
Lest haply he should breathe his life away
Unheeded: I like not this deep dead languor.
[Orestes wakes up.