CLYTEMNESTRA. Beware thy mother's anger-whetted hounds.[f11] ORESTES. My father's hounds have hunted me to thee. CLYTEMNESTRA. The stone that sepulchres the dead art thou, And I the tear on't. ORESTES. Cease: I voyaged here, With a fair breeze; my father's murder brought me. CLYTEMNESTRA. Ah me! I nursed a serpent on my breast. ORESTES.[n62] Thou hadst a prophet in thy dream, last night; And since thou kill'd the man thou shouldst have spared, The man, that now should spare thee, can but kill. [_He drives her into the house, and there murders her._ CHORUS. There's food for sorrow here; but rather, since Orestes could not choose but scale the height {127} Of bloody enterprise, our prayer is this: That he, the eye of this great house, may live.[n63] CHORAL HYMN. STROPHE I. Hall of old Priam, with sorrow unbearable, Vengeance hath come on the Argive thy foe; A pair of grim lions, a double Mars terrible,[n64] Comes to his palace, that levelled thee low. Chanced hath the doom of the guilty precisely, Even as Phœbus foretold it, and wisely Where the god pointed, was levelled the blow. Lift up the hymn of rejoicing; the lecherous, Sin-laden tyrant shall lord it no more; No more shall the mistress so bloody and treacherous Lavish the plundered Pelopidan store. STROPHE II. Sore chastisement[n65] came on the doomed and devoted, With dark-brooding purpose and fair-smiling show; And the daughter of Jove the eternal was noted, Guiding the hand that inflicted the blow-- Bright Justice, of Jove, the Olympian daughter; But blasted they fell with the breath of her slaughter Whose deeds of injustice made Justice their foe. Her from his shrine sent the rock-throned Apollo,[n66] The will of her high-purposed sire to obey, The track of the blood-stained remorseless to follow, Winged with sure death, though she lag by the way. EPODE. Ye rulers on Earth, fear the rulers in Heaven, No aid by the gods to the froward is given; For the bonds of our thraldom asunder are riven, And the day dawns clear. Lift up your heads; from prostration untimely Ye halls of the mighty be lifted sublimely! All-perfecting Time shall bring swift restitution, And cleanse the hearth pure from the gory pollution, Now the day dawns clear. And blithely shall welcome them Fortune the fairest,[n67] The brother and sister, with omens the rarest; Each friend of this house show the warm love thou bearest, Now the day dawns clear! {128} [_Enter_ ORESTES, _with the body of_ CLYTEMNESTRA.