Of blood.  This very night I crept alone
To my dead father’s grave, and poured thereon
My heart’s first tears and tresses of my head
New-shorn, and o’er the barrow of the dead
Slew a black lamb, unknown of them that reign
In this unhappy land....  I am not fain
To pass the city gates, but hold me here
Hard on the borders.  So my road is clear
To fly if men look close and watch my way;
If not, to seek my sister.  For men say
She dwelleth in these hills, no more a maid
But wedded.  I must find her house, for aid
To guide our work, and learn what hath betid
Of late in Argos.—­Ha, the radiant lid
Of Dawn’s eye lifteth!  Come, friend; leave we now
This trodden path.  Some worker of the plough,
Or serving damsel at her early task
Will presently come by, whom we may ask
If here my sister dwells.  But soft!  Even now
I see some bondmaid there, her death-shorn brow
Bending beneath its freight of well-water. 
Lie close until she pass; then question her. 
A slave might help us well, or speak some sign
Of import to this work of mine and thine.

[The two men retire into ambush. ELECTRA enters, returning from the well.

ELECTRA.

  Onward, O labouring tread,
    As on move the years;
  Onward amid thy tears,
    O happier dead!

Let me remember.  I am she, [Strophe 1. 
Agamemnon’s child, and the mother of me
Clytemnestra, the evil Queen,
Helen’s sister.  And folk, I ween,
That pass in the streets call yet my name
Electra....  God protect my shame! 
  For toil, toil is a weary thing,
    And life is heavy about my head;
  And thou far off, O Father and King,
    In the lost lands of the dead. 
A bloody twain made these things be;
One was thy bitterest enemy,
And one the wife that lay by thee.

Brother, brother, on some far shore [Antistrophe 1. 
Hast thou a city, is there a door
That knows thy footfall, Wandering One? 
Who left me, left me, when all our pain
Was bitter about us, a father slain,
And a girl that wept in her room alone. 
  Thou couldst break me this bondage sore,
    Only thou, who art far away,
  Loose our father, and wake once more.... 
    Zeus, Zeus, dost hear me pray?... 
The sleeping blood and the shame and the doom! 
O feet that rest not, over the foam
Of distant seas, come home, come home!

What boots this cruse that I carry? [Strophe 2. 
  O, set free my brow! 
For the gathered tears that tarry
  Through the day and the dark till now,
Now in the dawn are free,
  Father, and flow beneath
The floor of the world, to be
  As a song in she house of Death: 
From the rising up of the day
They guide my heart alway,
The silent tears unshed,
And my body mourns for the dead;
My cheeks bleed silently,
  And these bruised temples keep
Their pain, remembering thee
  And thy bloody sleep.