With sorrow's pain, and now
Their children's strife no more may be appeased
By kindly intercourse.
Elcctra, left alone,
Sails on a troubled sea,
*Still wailing evermore, with piteous cry,
The father whom she loved,
Like nightingale whose song is fraught with woe,
Nor has she any shrinking fear of death,
Ready to close her eyes
In darkness as of night,
If only she the Erinnys pair[1] destroy.1080
Who lives there true in soul
To noble stock as she?
Stroph. II.
None of the great and good
Would lose his ancient name,
And stain his glory by a wretched life.
So thou, my child, my child, did'st choose the fate.
The fate which all bewail,
*And, having warred with ill,
Did'st gain, in one brief word,
The good report of daughter wise and best.
Antistroph. II.
May'st thou, in might and wealth,1090
Prevail o'er those thy foes,
As much as now thou liv'st beneath their hands;
For I have found thee, not in high estate
Wending thy way, yet still,
In love and fear of Zeus,
Gaining the foremost prize
In all the laws that best and greatest are.
- ↑ The Erinnys pair are, of course, Clytemnestra and Ægisthos, looked on as intensely evil, and yet the instruments of a divine vengeance.
