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By me he fell, by me he died, I watch him to the grave, not cried By mourners of his housefolk; nay, His own child for a day like this Waits, as is seemly, and shall run By the white waves of Acheron To fold him in her arms and kiss! CHORUS. Lo, she who was erst reviled Revileth; and who shall say? Spoil taken from them that spoiled, Life-blood from them that slay! Surely while God ensueth His laws, while Time doth run 'Tis written: On him that doeth It shall be done. This is God's law and grace, Who then shall hunt the race Of curses from out this hall? The House is sealed withal To dreadfulness. CLYTEMNESTRA. Aye, thou hast found the Law, and stept In Truth's way.--Yet even now I call The Living Wrath which haunts this hall To truce and compact. I accept All the affliction he doth heap Upon me, and I charge him go Far off with his self-murdering woe To strange men's houses. I will keep Some little dower, and leave behind All else, contented utterly. I have swept the madness from the sky Wherein these brethren slew their kind. [_As she ceases, exhausted and with the fire gone out of her,_ AIGISTHOS, _with Attendants, bursts triumphantly in._ AIGISTHOS. O shining day, O dawn of righteousness Fulfilled! Now, now indeed will I confess That divine watchers o'er man's death and birth Look down on all the anguish of the earth, Now that I see him lying, as I love To see him, in this net the Furies wove, To atone the old craft of his father's hand. For Atreus, this man's father, in this land Reigning, and by Thyestes in his throne Challenged--he was his brother and mine own Father From home and city cast him out; And he, after long exile, turned about And threw him suppliant on the hearth, and won Promise of so much mercy, that his own Life-blood should reek not in his father's hall. Then did that godless brother, Atreus, call, To greet my sire--More eagerness, O God, Was there than love!--a feast of brotherhood. And, feigning joyous banquet, laid as meat Before him his dead children. The white feet And finger-fringed hands apart he set, Veiled from all seeing, and made separate The tables. And he straightway, knowing naught, Took of those bodies, eating that which wrought No health for all his race. And when he knew The unnatural deed, back from the board he threw, Spewing that murderous gorge, and spurning bra
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