Electra monologue — Specimens of Greek Tragedy — Aeschylus and Sophocles

Dearest of all memorials to my heart, Relic of my Orestes, what a change From those fond hopes with which I sent thee forth! Full of bright promise wast thou then, and now I see thee here reduced to nothingness. Would I myself had died before the hour When from the murderous hands that sought thy life I snatched and sent thee to a foreign shore, So hadst thou met thy end at once and slept In thy forefather's tomb. Instead whereof Thou hast died miserably far from home, An exile, with no sister at thy side. I was not there with loving hand to wash Thy corpse, to lay thee out, or gather up, As nature bade, the relics of the pyre. Strange hands those rites performed; and thou art here, A little dust clipt in a narrow urn. Unhappy me! how bootless were the pains Which many a day I spent in nursing thee, A labour that I loved, for thou wert not Thy mother's darling more than thou wert mine. No menial hands tended thy infancy, But I thy sister, joying in that name. Now all has vanished in a single day, And thou art gone, and like a storm hast swept All off with thee. My father is no more, Thy sister dies in thee, thyself art dust. Our enemies exult, and, mad with joy, Is that unnatural mother, whom to smite With thine own hand thou oft didst promise me, By secret messages which destiny, Unkind to both of us, now brings to naught, Sending me here, instead of that loved form, Cold ashes and an ineffectual shade.