Chorus.

Woe; woe:  I too with refluent melody,
  An echo wild of the dirges of the Asian,
I, thy bond maiden, cry to answer thee: 
 The music that lieth hid in lamentation,
The song that is heard in the deep hearts of the dead,
  That the Lord of dead men ’mid his dancing singeth,
  And never joy-cry, never joy it bringeth;
  Woe for the house of Kings in desolation,
Woe for the light of the sceptre vanished.

From kings in Argos of old, from joyous kings,
          The beginning came: 
Then peril swift upon peril, flame on flame: 
The dark and wheeling coursers, as wild with wings,
The cry of one betrayed on a drowning shore,
The sun that blanched in heaven, the world that
        changed—­
Evil on evil and none alone!—­deranged
By the Golden Lamb and the wrong grown ever more;
Blood following blood, sorrow on sorrow sore! 
So come the dead of old, the dead in wrath,
Back on the seed of the high Tantalidae;
Surely the Spirit of Life an evil path
                  Hath hewed for thee. 
Iphigenia. 
From the beginning the Spirit of my life
Was an evil spirit.  Alas for my mother’s zone,
And the night that bare me!  From the beginning
  Strife,
As a book to read, Fate gave me for mine own. 
They wooed a bride for the strikers down of Troy—­
Thy first-born, Mother:  was it for this, thy prayer?—­
A hind of slaughter to die in a father’s snare,
Gift of a sacrifice where none hath joy.

    They set me on a royal wane;
      Down the long sand they led me on,
    A bride new-decked, a bride of bane,
      In Aulis to the Nereid’s son. 
    And now estranged for evermore
      Beyond the far estranging foam
    I watch a flat and herbless shore,
      Unloved, unchilded, without home
    Or city:  never more to meet
      For Hera’s dance with Argive maids,
    Nor round the loom ’mid singing sweet
      Make broideries and storied braids,
  Of writhing giants overthrown
  And clear-eyed Pallas ...  All is gone! 
  Red hands and ever-ringing ears: 
  The blood of men that friendless die,
  The horror of the strangers’ cry
  Unheard, the horror of their tears.

  But now, let even that have rest: 
  I weep for him in Argos slain,
    The brother whom I knew, Ah me,
    A babe, a flower; and yet to be—­
    There on his mother’s arms and breast—­
    The crowned Orestes, lord of men!

Leader of the chorus. 
Stay, yonder from some headland of the sea
There comes—­methinks a herdsman, seeking thee.

(Enter a herdsman.  Iphigenia is still on her knees.)

Herdsman. 
Daughter of Clytemnestra and her king,
Give ear!  I bear news of a wondrous thing.

Iphigenia. 
What news, that should so mar my obsequies?