I answer then. And, mother, this shall be My prayer of opening, where hangs the whole: Would God that He had made thee clean of soul! Helen and thou--O, face and form were fair, Meet for men's praise; but sisters twain ye were, Both things of naught, a stain on Castor's star, And Helen slew her honour, borne afar In wilful ravishment: but thou didst slay The highest man of the world. And now wilt say 'Twas wrought in justice for thy child laid low At Aulis?... Ah, who knows thee as I know? Thou, thou, who long ere aught of ill was done Thy child, when Agamemnon scarce was gone, Sate at the looking-glass, and tress by tress Didst comb the twined gold in loneliness. When any wife, her lord being far away. Toils to be fair, O blot her out that day As false within! What would she with a cheek So bright in strange men's eyes, unless she seek Some treason? None but I, thy child, could so Watch thee in Hellas: none but I could know Thy face of gladness when our enemies Were strong, and the swift cloud upon thine eyes If Troy seemed falling, all thy soul keen-set Praying that he might come no more!... And yet It was so easy to be true. A king Was thine, not feebler, not in anything Below Aegisthus; one whom Hellas chose For chief beyond all kings. Aye, and God knows, How sweet a name in Greece, after the sin Thy sister wrought, lay in thy ways to win. Ill deeds make fair ones shine, and turn thereto Men's eyes.--Enough: but say he wronged thee; slew By craft thy child:--what wrong had I done, what The babe Orestes? Why didst render not Back unto us, the children of the dead, Our father's portion? Must thou heap thy bed With gold of murdered men, to buy to thee Thy strange man's arms? Justice! Why is not he Who cast Orestes out, cast out again? Not slain for me whom doubly he hath slain, In living death, more bitter than of old My sister's? Nay, when all the tale is told Of blood for blood, what murder shall we make, I and Orestes, for our father's sake?

Electra Monologue

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