Chorus.
O day when from his place
The Sun his winged steeds wheeled,
Turning the splendour of his holy face
From horrors there revealed!
That golden lamb[1] hath brought
Woe added unto woe,
Pang upon pang, murder on murder wrought:
All these thy line must know.
Vengeance thine house must feel
For sons thereof long dead:200
Their sins Fate, zealous with an evil zeal,
Visiteth on thine head.
Iphigeneia.
From the beginning was to me accurst
My mother's spousal-fate:
The Queens of Birth with hardship from the first
Crushed down my childhood-state.
I, the first blossom of the bridal-bower
Of Leda's hapless daughter210
By princes wooed, was nursed for that dark hour
Of sacrificial slaughter,
For vows that stained with sin my father's hands
When I was chariot-borne
Unto the Nereid's son on Aulis' sands—
Ah me, a bride forlorn!
Lone by a stern sea's desert shores I live
Loveless, no children clinging
To me—the homeless, friendless, cannot give220
To Hera praise of singing
