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EL.
Oh how I pity thine infatuate mind!

CHR.
Why? Dost thou find no comfort in my news?

EL.
You know not where you roam. Far wide! far wide!

CHR.
Not know? when I have seen it with mine eyes?

EL.
Dear, he is dead. Look not to him, poor girl!
Salvation comes to thee no more from him.

CHR.
Oh me, unfortunate! Who told thee this?

EL.
He who stood by and saw his life destroyed.

CHR.
Amazement seizes me. Where is that man?

EL.
Right welcome to the mother there within.

CHR.
Me miserable! Who then can have decked
With all those ceremonies our father’s tomb?

EL.
I cannot but suppose some hand hath brought
These gifts in memory of Orestes dead.

CHR.
O cruel fate! While I in ecstasy
Sped with such news, all ignorant, it seems,
Of our dire fortune; and, arriving, find
Fresh sorrows added to the former woe.

EL.
It is so, sister; yet if thou wilt list
To me, thou mayest disperse this heaviness.

CHR.
What? Shall I raise the dead again to life?

EL.
I did not mean so. I am not so fond.

CHR.
What bid you then that I have power to do?

EL.
To endure courageously what I enjoin.

CHR.
So it make profit, I will not refuse.

EL.
Remember, without toil no plan may thrive!

CHR.
I know it, and will aid thee to my power.

EL.
Then hearken my resolve. Thou seest now,
We have no friendly succour in the world;
But death has taken all, and we are left
Two only. I, so long as I could hear
My brother lived and flourished, still had hope
He would arise to wreak his father’s blood.
But now that he is gone, to thee I turn,
To help thy sister boldly to destroy
The guilty author of our father’s death,
Aegisthus.–Wherefore hide it from thee now?
–Yea, sister! Till what term wilt thou remain
Inactive? To what end? What hope is yet
Left standing? Surely thou hast cause to grieve,
Bobbed of thy father’s opulent heritage,
And feeling bitterly the creeping years
That find thee still a virgin and unwed.
Nay, nor imagine thou shalt ever know
That blessing. Not so careless of his life
Is King Aegisthus, as to risk the birth
Of sons from us, to his most certain fall.
But if thou wilt but follow my resolve,
First thou shalt win renown of piety
From our dead father, and our brother too,
Who rest beneath the ground, and shalt be free
For evermore in station as in birth,
And nobly matched in marriage, for the good
Draw gazers to them still. Then seest thou not
What meed of honour, if thou dost my will,
Thou shalt apportion to thyself and me?
For who, beholding us, what citizen,
What foreigner, will not extend the hand
Of admiration, and exclaim, ‘See, friends,
These scions of one stock, these noble twain,
These that have saved their father’s house from woe,
Who once when foes were mighty, set their life
Upon a cast, and stood forth to avenge
The stain of blood! Who will not love the pair
And do them reverence? Who will not give
Honour at festivals, and in the throng
Of popular resort, to these in chief,
For their high courage and their bold emprise?’
Such fame will follow us in all the world.
Living or dying, still to be renowned.
Ah, then, comply, dear sister; give thy sire
This toil–this labour to thy brother give;
End these my sufferings, end thine own regret:
The well-born cannot bear to live in shame.