University of Virginia Library

Orestes
ORESTES
Nearer the end: courage, poor heart, one deed
And I am sure of fate and lord of time:
How the sky thickens and the night runs in:
I have shed off all mean and earthly fear
And I am drowsy for the sweet strong rest.
Thou canst not follow me with thy disgrace,
My mother, nor shall any point and say,
“Behold her son who did such deed of shame;
The woman with the burning shameful eyes,
Who sits up there and sins on gloriously.
O, she has wept a little tear no doubt
Upon the sheet that covered her dead son;
May be she laid it back and bared the eyes,
And the lean tightened lips; but in an hour,
O, she rose up and went to her great sin,
Softly and silent went, with that white face
Fresh in the very picture of her thought.”
There shall no word be said: I doubt not here
The drowsing mumbling creature of the town
Shall prate upon it thus, and rub its hands
Upon the carrion flavour of the thing,
And beckon up its peers to see, and whisper.
And I am cold and stiff and deeply laid
And she sins warmly on—nay, he must die:
I cannot see but that this man must die.
O, I would not go down with bloody hands
If I could see a turning otherwhere;
I cannot weed the earth of all its knaves,
Had I the sword of Perseus, and this one
Might as well breathe and fester with the rest.
It is a knot of serpents, coiled and crammed,
Sucking the poison vapour of a marsh,
That fatting them, kills else all healthy life.
I do not dream the serpent breed shall fail
Tho' I crush one that in his hideous coils
Has wound my mother. But it seems to me,
Man's effort being bounded, he can only
Rid out his own peculiar evil, and sleep,
Leaving the issue of the monstrous rest
On the god's knees, then gladly fold his hands.