Of guile was coiled round Tyndareus' child
By the serpent with blood of a mother defiled.
Chorus.
Where then wast thou?—long since in terror fled?
Phrygian.
In the Phrygian fashion, it chanced, was I swaying
Beside Queen Helen the rounded fan:
On the cheeks of Helen its plumes were playing,
Through the tresses of Helen the breeze was straying,
As I chanted a strain barbarian.1430
And the flax from her distaff twining
Her fingers wrought evermore,
And ever her threads trailed down to the floor:
For her mind was to broider the purple-shining
Vesture of Phrygian spoils with her thread,
For a gift unto Klytemnestra the dead.
Then Orestes unto the daughter
Of Sparta spake, and besought her:
"O child of Zeus, arise from thy seat,
And hitherward set on the floor thy feet,1440
To the ancient hearthstone-altar pace
Of Pelops, our father of olden days,
To hearken my words in the holy place."
On, on he led her, and followed she
With no foreboding of things to be.
But his brother-plotter betook him the while
Unto other deeds, that Phocian vile,—
"Hence!—dastards ever the Phrygians were."
Here, there, he bolted them, penned in the halls:
Some prisoned he in the chariot-stalls,
In the closets some, some here, some there,1450
Sundered and severed afar from the queen in the snare.
