Aeschylus - The Libation Bearers (Lines 398-448) lyrics

CHORUS: It is the law: when the blood of slaughter wets the ground it wants more blood. Slaughter cries for the Fury of those long dead to bring destruction on destruction churning in its wake! Orestes: Sweet Earth, how long? - great lords of d**h, look on, you mighty curses of the dead. Look on the last of Atreus' children, here, the remnant helpless, cast from home... god, where to turn? Leader: And again my pulses race and leap, I can feel your sobs, and hope becomes despair and the heart goes dark to hear you - then the anguish ebbs, I see you stronger, hope and the light come on me. Electra: What hope? - what force to summon, what can help? What but the pain we suffer, bred by her? So let her fawn. She can never soothe her young wolves - Mother dear, you bred our wolves' raw fury. LEADER AND CHORUS: I beat and beat the dirge like a Persian mourner, hands clenched tight and the blows are coming thick and fast, you can see the hands shoot out, now hand over hand and down - the head pulsates, blood at the temples pounding to explode! Electra: Reckless, brutal mother - oh dear god! - The brutal, cruel cortege, the warlord stripped of his honour guard and stripped of mourning rites - you dared entomb your lord unwept, unsung. Orestes: Shamed for all the world, you mean - dear god, my father degraded so! Oh she'll pay, she'll pay, by the gods and these bare hands - just let me take her life and die! LEADER AND CHORUS: Shamed? Butchered, I tell you - hands lopped, strung to shackle his neck and arms! So she worked, she buried him, made your life a hell. Your father mutilated - do you hear? Electra: You tell him of father's d**h, but I was an outcast, worthless, leashed like a vicious dog in a dark cell. I wept - laughter died that day... I wept, pouring out the tears behind my veils. Hear that, my brother, carve it on your heart!