Therefore go thou within, and watch withal
That all this chance may well and aptly fall.
For you, I charge ye of your lips take heed:
Good words or silence, as the hour may need.
While One Below his counsel shall afford
And ope to me the strait way of the sword.
[Orestes and Pylades depart, Electra goes into the House.
Chorus.
[Strophe 1
Host on host, breedeth Earth
Things of fear and ghastly birth;
Arm on arm spreads the Sea
That full of coilèd horrors be;
And fires the sky doth multiply;
And things that crawl, and things that fly,
And they that are born in the wind can tell of the perils
Of tempest and the Wrath on high.
[Antistrophe 1
But, ah, the surge over-bold
Of man's passion who hath told?
Who the Love, wild as hate,
In woman's bosom desperate,
Which feedeth in the fields of Woe?
Where lives of mortals linkèd go
The heart of a woman is perilous past all perils
Of stars above or deeps below.
[Strophe 2
Wist ye not, O light of mind,
Her who slew her son with hate,
Thestios' daughter desolate,
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