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 misery
of my house?
Oh tell me of the poor unfortunate!
Speak of Orestes!
Orestes.
Would that he were dead!
Forth from his mother’s blood her ghost
arose,
And to the ancient daughters of the night
Cries,—“Let him not escape,—the
matricide!
Pursue the victim, dedicate to you!”
They hear, and glare around with hollow eyes,
Like greedy eagles. In their murky dens
They stir themselves, and from the corners creep
Their comrades, dire Remorse and pallid Fear;
Before them fumes a mist of Acheron;
Perplexingly around the murderer’s brow
The eternal contemplation of the past
Rolls in its cloudy circles. Once again
The grisly band, commissioned to destroy,
Pollute earth’s beautiful and heaven-sown
fields,
From which an ancient curse had banish’d
them.
Their rapid feet the fugitive pursue;
They only pause to start a wilder fear.
Iphigenia.
Unhappy one; thy lot resembles his,
Thou feel’st what he, poor fugitive, must
suffer.
Orestes.
What say’st thou? why presume my fate like
his?
Iphigenia.
A brother’s murder weighs upon thy soul;
Thy younger brother told the mournful tale.
Orestes.
I cannot suffer that thy noble soul
Should be deceiv’d by error. Rich in guile,
And practis’d in deceit, a stranger may
A web of falsehood cunningly devise
To snare a stranger;—between us be truth.
I am Orestes! and this guilty head
Is stooping to the tomb, and covets death;
It will be welcome now in any shape.
Whoe’er thou art, for thee and for my friend
I wish deliverance;—I desire it not.
Thou seem’st to linger here against thy will;
Contrive some means of flight, and leave me here:
My lifeless corpse hurl’d headlong from the rock,
My blood shall mingle with the dashing waves,
And bring a curse upon this barbarous shore!
Return together home to lovely Greece,
With joy a new existence to commence.
[Orestes retires.