Читать книгу The Greatest German Classics (Vol. 1-14) - Various - Страница 194

Have then the powers above selected me

To be the herald of a dreadful deed,

Which in the drear and soundless realms of night

I fain would hide for ever? 'Gainst my will

Thy gentle voice constrains me; it demands,

And shall receive, a tale of direst woe.

Electra, on the day when fell her sire,

Her brother from impending doom conceal'd;

Him Strophius, his father's relative,

Receiv'd with kindest care, and rear'd him up

With his own son, named Pylades, who soon

Around the stranger twin'd love's fairest bonds.

And as they grew, within their inmost souls

There sprang the burning longing to revenge

The monarch's death. Unlook'd for, and disguis'd,

They reach Mycene, feigning to have brought

The mournful tidings of Orestes' death,

Together with his ashes. Them the queen

Gladly receives. Within the house they enter;

Orestes to Electra shows himself:

She fans the fires of vengeance into flame,

Which in the sacred presence of a mother

Had burn'd more dimly. Silently she leads

Her brother to the spot where fell their sire;

Where lurid blood-marks, on the oft-wash'd floor,

With pallid streaks, anticipate revenge.

With fiery eloquence she pictured forth

Each circumstance of that atrocious deed,

Her own oppress'd and miserable life,

The prosperous traitor's insolent demeanor,

The perils threat'ning Agamemnon's race

From her who had become their stepmother,

Then in his hand the ancient dagger thrust,

Which often in the house of Tantalus

With savage fury rag'd—and by her son

Was Clytemnestra slain.