_Chorus now changing to Blank Verse_. We meant well, but do as you will, we will follow you.--_Elec._ I am indeed ashamed; but remember the trouble I am in: to be hated by my mother, house-mate with my father's murderers; with Aegisthus sitting on my father's throne by day and pouring libations on the hearth he violated; my mother not living in fear of the Erinnys, but making a red-letter day of the day my father died: I, alas! keep his birth day in solitary feast. I am bitterly chidden when caught weeping, and threatened when news comes of Orestes: all hope is far.--Aegisthus is from home, or she dared not have indulged her grief even thus far. {327} _Enter her sister, Chrysothemis, bearing funeral offerings_. She remonstrates with Electra for uselessly wailing, instead of adapting herself to her fate.--_Elec._ retorts that she has learned her lesson by rote. She advises to hate when there is strength to back hatred, yet she will not join in working revenge.--_Electra_ covets not her choice of ease and wealth, and to be called her mother's child, while it is open to her to be her father's!--_Cho._ moderates: each may learn something from the other.--_Chrysoth._ is accustomed to Electra's want of charity and would not now have accosted her except to warn her of new evils: they mean to get her out of the country and shut up in a dungeon where she shall never see the light of day.--A rapid stichomuthic dialogue follows as to temporizing and resisting, and then _Chrys._ is going to do her errand.--_Elec._ enquires what this is, and learns that Clytaemnestra, disturbed by a dream, is sending propitiatory libations. A rumor ran {417} That she had seen our father's presence come (Yes, thine and mine) a second time to light, And then that he upon the hearth stood up, And took the sceptre which he bore of old, Which now Aegisthus bears, and fixed it there, And from it sprang a sucker fresh and strong, And all Mycenae rested in its shade. This tale I heard from some one who was near When she declared her vision to the Sun; But more than this I heard not, save that she Now sends me hither through that fright of hers. Electra catching a gleam of hope, adjures her to disobey, and in place of Clytaemnestra's offerings to put on the tomb their own: Electra's own withered lock and untrimmed girdle; and instead of propitiatory prayer pray to send Orestes.--_Cho._ approves and _Chrysothemis_ catches the spirit and _exit_. {471} CHORAL INTERLUDE I _in Strophe, Antistrophe and Epode._