"Reft was I of the sun whose sudden ray
Did with new joy illume
These halls, long sunk in gloom;
It gleamed,—then died away.
Anon, the cheering light,
New-kindled, in these halls shall shine once more,
What time, with lustral rite,
From the polluted hearth is purged the gore,
And Atè put to flight. With form benign,
Fortune, long time an alien, comes to claim
Her home, redeemed from shame.
Clearly the light doth shine !"
No cries are heard this time. The agonies of a mother slain by her own son are too horrible to be even heard. We know the deed is done, and this silence makes the act of solemn justice still more tremendous.
It is done, and the scene is opened; and as we saw Clytemnestra standing in her wicked triumph over the body of her husband, holding in her hand the bloody axe, and pointing to the robe in which her victim had been entangled to be slain,—so now we see Orestes, unhappy but not guilty, standing over his mother's corpse, with his drawn sword in his hand, and pointing to the same robe of Agamemnon in testimony of her guilt. Servants grouped behind him display the long folds of the fatal garment, while Orestes, inspired by the divine justice of which he has been the agent, speaks these solemn words:—
"Behold the tyrants of this land, the twain
