60
b a serpent bare.
ORESTES
What then the sum and issue of the tale?
CHORUS
Even as a swaddled child, she lull'd the thing.
ORESTES
What suckling craved the creature, born full-fanged?
CHORUS
Yet in her dreams she proffered it the breast.
ORESTES
How? did the hateful thing not bite her teat?
CHORUS
Yea, and sucked forth a blood-gout in the milk.
ORESTES
Not vain this dream--it bodes a man's revenge.
CHORUS
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.
ORESTES
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.
CHORUS
So do; yet ere thou doest, speak to us, Siding some act, some, by not acting, aid.
ORESTES
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 ta'en 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