Clytemnestra comes out with the dagger in her hand: The dagger drips with blood; my hands, my robe, My face--they all are wet with blood. What vengeance Shall yet be taken for this blood? Already I see this very steel turned on my breast, And by whose hand! The son whom she forebodes as the avenger of Agamemnon's death passes his childhood and early youth at the court of Strophius in Phocis. The tragedy named for him opens with Electra's soliloquy as she goes to weep at the tomb of their father:-- Night, gloomy, horrible, atrocious night, Forever present to my thought! each year For now two lusters I have seen thee come, Clothed on with darkness and with dreams of blood, And blood that should have expiated thine Is not yet spilt! O memory, O sight! Upon these stones I saw thee murdered lie, Murdered, and by whose hand!... I swear to thee, If I in Argos, in thy palace live, Slave of Aegisthus, with my wicked mother, Nothing makes me endure a life like this Saving the hope of vengeance. Far away Orestes is; but living! I saved thee, brother; I keep myself for thee, till the day rise When thou shalt make to stream upon yon tomb Not helpless tears like these, but our foe's blood. While Electra fiercely muses, Clytemnestra enters, with the appeal: _Cly._ Daughter! _El._ What voice! Oh Heaven, thou here? _Cly._ My daughter, Ah, do not fly me! Thy pious task I fain Would share with thee. Aegisthus in vain forbids, He shall not know. Ah, come! go we together Unto the tomb. _El._ Whose tomb? _Cly._ Thy--hapless--father's. _El._ Wherefore not say thy husband's tomb? 'T is well: Thou darest not speak it. But how dost thou dare Turn thitherward thy steps--thou that dost reek Yet with his blood? _Cly._ Two lusters now are passed Since that dread day, and two whole lusters now I weep my crime. _El._ And what time were enough For that? Ah, if thy tears should be eternal, They yet were nothing. Look! Seest thou not still The blood upon these horrid walls the blood That thou didst splash them with? And at thy presence Lo, how it reddens and grows quick again! Fly, thou, whom I must never more call mother! * * * *