Orestes. 
If social bonds
Or ties more close connect thee with this house,
As this thy joy evinces, rein thy heart;
For insupportable the sudden plunge
From happiness to sorrow’s gloomy depth. 
As yet thou only know’st the hero’s death.

Iphigenia. 
And is not this intelligence enough?

Orestes. 
Half of the horror yet remains untold,

Iphigenia. 
Electra and Orestes both survive,
What have I then to fear?

Orestes. 
And fear’st thou nought
For Clytemnestra?

Iphigenia. 
Her, nor hope nor fear
Have power to save.

Orestes. 
She to the land of hope
Hath bid farewell.

Iphigenia. 
Did her repentant hand
Shed her own blood?

Orestes. 
Not so; yet her own blood
Inflicted death.

Iphigenia. 
Speak less ambiguously. 
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,
With kindest care receiv’d, and rear’d the child
With his own son, named Pylades, who soon
Around the stranger twin’d the bonds of love. 
And as they grew, within their inmost souls
There sprang the burning longing to revenge
The monarch’s death.  Unlookd 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 pictures forth
Each circumstance of that atrocious deed,—­
Her own oppress’d and miserable life,
The prosperous traitor’s insolent demeanour,
The perils threat’ning Agamemnon’s race
From her who had become their stepmother;
Then in his hand the ancient dagger thrusts,
Which often in the house of Tantalus
With savage fury rag’d,—­and by her son
Is Clytemnestra slain.