Did her repentant hand shed her own blood?
ORESTES
Not so; yet her own blood inflicted death.
IPHIGENIA
More plainly speak, nor leave me in suspense.
Uncertainty around my anxious head
Her dusky, thousand-folded pinion waves.
ORESTES
Have then the powers above selected me
To be the herald of a dreadful deed,
Which in the drear and soundless realms of night
I fain would hide for ever? 'Gainst my will
Thy gentle voice constrains me; it demands,
And shall receive, a tale of direst woe.
Electra, on the day when fell her sire,
Her brother from impending doom conceal'd;
Him Strophius, his father's relative,
Receiv'd with kindest care, and rear'd him up
With his own son, named Pylades, who soon
Around the stranger twin'd love's fairest bonds.
And as they grew, within their inmost souls
There sprang the burning longing to revenge
The monarch's death. Unlook'd for, and disguis'd,
They reach Mycene, feigning to have brought
The mournful tidings of Orestes' death,
Together with his ashes. Them the queen
Gladly receives. Within the house they enter;
Orestes to Electra shows himself:
She fans the fires of vengeance into flame,
Which in the sacred presence of a mother
Had burn'd more dimly. Silently she leads
Her brother to the spot where fell their sire;
Where lurid blood-marks, on the oft-wash'd floor,
With pallid streaks, anticipate revenge.
With fiery eloquence she pictured forth
Each circumstance of that atrocious deed,
Her own oppress'd and miserable life,
The prosperous traitor's insolent demeanor,
The perils threat'ning Agamemnon's race
From her who had become their stepmother,
Then in his hand the ancient dagger thrust,
Which often in the house of Tantalus
With savage fury rag'd,—and by her son
Was Clytemnestra slain.
IPHIGENIA
Immortal powers!
Whose pure and blest existence glides away
'Mid ever shifting clouds, me have ye kept
So many years secluded from the world,
Retain'd me near yourselves, consign'd to me
The childlike task to feed the sacred fire,
And taught my spirit, like the hallow'd flame,
With never-clouded brightness to aspire
To your pure mansions,—but at length to feel
With keener woe the horror of my house?
O tell me of the poor unfortunate!
Speak of Orestes!