That hath sped thro’ mine ear, like a shaft from a bow!  Zeus, Zeus! it is thou who dost send from below  A doom on the desperate ere long  On a mother a father shall visit his wrong.

Be it mine to upraise thro’ the reek of the pyre  The chant of delight, while the funeral fire  Devoureth the corpse of a man that is slain  And a woman laid low!  For who bids me conceal it! out-rending control,  Blows ever the stern blast of hate thro’ my soul,  And before me a vision of wrath and of bane  Flits and waves to and fro.

Zeus, thou alone to us art parent now.  Smite with a rending blow  Upon their heads, and bid the land be well:  Set right where wrong hath stood; and thou give ear,  O Earth, unto my prayer-  Yea, hear O mother Earth, and monarchy of hell

Nay, the law is sternly set-  Blood-drops shed upon the ground  Plead for other bloodshed yet;  Loud the call of death doth sound,  Calling guilt of olden time,  A Fury, crowning crime with crime.

Where, where are ye, avenging powers,  Puissant Furies of the slain?  Behold the relics of the race  Of Atreus, thrust from pride of place!  O Zeus, what borne henceforth is ours,  What refuge to attain?

Lo, at your wail my heart throbs, wildly stirred;  Now am I lorn with sadness,  Darkened in all my soul, to hear your sorrow’s word  Anon to hope, the seat of strength, I rise,-  She, thrusting grief away, lifts up mine eyes  To the new dawn of gladness.

Skills it to tell of aught save wrong on wrong,  Wrought by our mother’s deed?  Though now she fawn for pardon, sternly strong  Standeth our wrath, and will nor hear nor heed.  Her children’s soul is wolfish, born from hers,  And softens not by prayers.

I dealt upon my breast the blow  That Asian mourning women know;  Wails from-my breast the fun’ral cry,  The Cissian weeping melody;  Stretched rendingly forth, to tatter and tear,  My clenched hands wander, here and there,  From head to breast; distraught with blows  Throb dizzily my brows.

Aweless in hate, O mother, sternly brave!  As in a foeman’s grave  Thou laid’st in earth a king, but to the bier  No citizen drew nears-  Thy husband, thine, yet for his obsequies,  Thou bad’st no wail arise!

Alas, the shameful burial thou dost speak!  Yet I the vengeance of his shame will wreak-  That do the gods command!  That shall achieve mine hand!  Grant me to thrust her life away, and  Will dare to die!

List thou the deed! Hewn down and foully torn,  He to the tomb was borne;  Yea, by her hand, the deed who wrought,  With like dishonour to the grave was brought,  And by her hand she strove, with strong desire,  Thy life to crush, O child, by murder of thy sire:  Bethink thee, hearing, of the shame, the pain  Wherewith that sire was slain!

Yea, such was the doom of my sire; well-a-day,  I was thrust from his side,-  As a dog from the chamber they thrust me away,  And in place of my laughter rose sobbing and tears,  As in darkness I lay.  O father, if this word can pass to thine ears,  To thy soul let it reach and abide!

Let it pass, let it pierce, through the sense of thine ear,  To thy soul, where in silence it waiteth the hour!  The past is accomplished; but rouse thee to hear  What the future prepareth; awake and appear,  Our champion, in wrath and in power!

O father, to thy loved ones come in aid.

With tears I call on thee.

Listen and rise to light!  Be thou with us, be thou against the foe!  Swiftly this cry arises-even so  Pray we, the loyal band, as we have prayed!

Let their might meet with mine, and their right with my right.

O ye Gods, it is yours to decree.

Ye call unto the dead; I quake to hear.  Fate is ordained of old, and shall fulfil your prayer.

Alas, the inborn curse that haunts our home,  Of Ate’s bloodstained scourge the tuneless sound!  Alas, the deep insufferable doom,  The stanchless wound!

It shall be stanched, the task is ours,-  Not by a stranger’s, but by kindred hand,  Shall be chased forth the blood-fiend of our land.  Be this our spoken spell, to call Earth’s nether powers!

Lords of a dark eternity,  To you has come the children’s cry,  Send up from hell, fulfil your aid  To them who prayed.

O father, murdered in unkingly wise,  Fulfil my prayer, grant me thine halls to sway.

To me, too, grant this boon-dark death to deal  Unto Aegisthus, and to ‘scape my doom.

So shall the rightful feasts that mortals pay  Be set for thee; else, not for thee shall rise  The scented reek of altars fed with flesh,  But thou shalt lie dishonoured: hear thou me!

I too, from my full heritage restored,  Will pour the lustral streams, what time I pass  Forth as a bride from these paternal halls,  And honour first, beyond all graves, thy tomb.

Earth, send my sire to fend me in the fight!

Give fair-faced fortune, O Persephone!

Bethink thee, father, in the laver slain-

Bethink thee of the net they handselled for thee!

Bonds not of brass ensnared thee, father mine.

Yea, the ill craft of an enfolding robe.

By this our bitter speech arise, O sire!

Raise thou thine head at love’s last, dearest call!

Yea, speed forth Right to aid thy kinsmen’s cause;  Grip for grip, let them grasp the foe, if thou  Willest in triumph to forget thy fall.

Hear me, O father, once again hear me.  Lo! at thy tomb, two fledglings of thy brood-  A man-child and a maid; hold them in ruth,  Nor wipe them out, the last of Pelops’ line.  For while they live, thou livest from the dead;  Children are memory’s voices, and preserve  The dead from wholly dying: as a net  Is ever by the buoyant corks upheld,  Which save the flax-mesh, in the depth submerged.  Listen, this wail of ours doth rise for thee,  And as thou heedest it thyself art saved.

In sooth, a blameless prayer ye spake at length-  The tomb’s requital for its dirge denied:  Now, for the rest, as thou art fixed to do,  Take fortune by the hand and work thy will.

The doom is set; and yet I fain would ask-  Not swerving from the course of my resolve,-  Wherefore she sent these offerings, and why  She softens all too late her cureless deed?  An idle boon it was, to send them here  Unto the dead who recks not of such gifts.  I cannot guess her thought, but well I ween  Such gifts are skilless to atone such crime.  Be blood once spilled, an idle strife he strives  Who seeks with other wealth or wine outpoured  To atone the deed. So stands the word, nor fails.  Yet would I know her thought; speak, if thou knowest.

I know it, son; for at her side I stood.  ‘Twas the night-wandering terror of a dream  That flung her shivering from her couch, and bade her-  Her, the accursed of God-these offerings send.

Heard ye the dream, to tell it forth aright?

Yea, from herself; her womb a serpent bare.

What then the sum and issue of the tale?

Even as a swaddled child, she lull’d the thing.

What suckling craved the creature, born full-fanged?

Yet in her dreams she proffered it the breast.

How? did the hateful thing not bite her teat?

Yea, and sucked forth a blood-gout in the milk.

Not vain this dream-it bodes a man’s revenge.

Then out of sleep she started with a cry,  And thro’ the palace for their mistress’ aid  Full many lamps, that erst lay blind with night,  Flared into light; then, even as mourners use,  She sends these offerings, in hope to win  A cure to cleave and sunder sin from doom.

Earth and my father’s grave, to you I call-  Give this her dream fulfilment, and thro’ me.  I read it in each part coincident  With what shall be; for mark, that serpent sprang  From the same womb as I, in swaddling bands  By the same hands was swathed, lipped the same breast,  And sucking forth the same sweet mother’s-milk  Infused a clot of blood; and in alarm  She cried upon her wound the cry of pain.  The rede is clear: the thing of dread she nursed,  The death of blood she dies; and I, ’tis I,  In semblance of a serpent, that must slay her.  Thou art my seer, and thus I read the dream.

So do; yet ere thou doest, speak to us,  Bidding some act, some, by not acting, aid.

Brief my command: I bid my sister pass  In silence to the house, and all I bid  This my design with wariness conceal,  That they who did by craft a chieftain slay  May by like craft and in like noose be talen,  Dying the death which Loxias foretold-  Apollo, king and prophet undisproved.  I with this warrior Pylades will come  In likeness of a stranger, full equipt  As travellers come, and at the palace gates  Will stand, as stranger yet in friendship’s bond  Unto this house allied; and each of us  Will speak the tongue that round Parnassus sounds,  Feigning such speech as Phocian voices use.  And what if none of those that tend the gates  Shall welcome us with gladness, since the house  With ills divine is baunted? If this hap,  We at the gate will bide, till, passing by,  Some townsman make conjecture and proclaim,  How? is Aegisthus here, and knowingly  Keeps suppliants aloof, by bolt and bar?  Then shall I win my way; and if I cross  The threshold of the gate, the palace’ guard,  And find him throned where once my father sat-  Or if he come anon, and face to face  Confronting, drop his eyes from mine-I swear  He shall not utter, Who art thou and whence?  Ere my steel leap, and compassed round with death  Low he shall lie: and thus, full-fed with doom,  The Fury of the house shall drain once more  A deep third draught of rich unmingled blood.  But thou, O sister, look that all within  Be well prepared to give these things event.  And ye-I say ’twere well to bear a tongue  Full of fair silence and of fitting speech  As each beseems the time; and last, do thou,  Hermes the warder-god, keep watch and ward,  And guide to victory my striving sword.

strophe 1

Many and marvellous the things of fear  Earth’s breast doth bear;  And the sea’s lap with many monsters teems,  And windy levin-bolts and meteor gleams  Breed many deadly things-  Unknown and flying forms, with fear upon their wings,  And in their tread is death;  And rushing whirlwinds, of whose blasting breath  Man’s tongue can tell.

antistrophe 1

But who can tell aright the fiercer thing,  The aweless soul, within man’s breast inhabiting?  Who tell how, passion-fraught and love-distraught,  The woman’s eager, craving thought  Doth wed mankind to woe and ruin fell?  Yea, how the loveless love that doth posses  The woman, even as the lioness,  Doth rend and wrest apart, with eager strife,  The link of wedded life?

The Choephori by Aeschylus

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