PYLADES.
How like long hair those blood-stains, tawny red!

ORESTES.
And spoils of slaughtered men--there by the thatch.

PYLADES.
Aye, first-fruits of the harvest, when they catch
Their strangers!--'Tis a place to search with care

[He searches, while ORESTES sits.]

ORESTES.
O God, where hast thou brought me? What new snare
Is this?--I slew my mother; I avenged
My father at thy bidding; I have ranged
A homeless world, hunted by shapes of pain,
And circling trod in mine own steps again.
At last I stood once more before thy throne
And cried thee question, what thing should be done
To end these miseries, wherein I reel
Through Hellas, mad, lashed like a burning wheel;
And thou didst bid me seek ... what land but this
Of Tauri, where thy sister Artemis
Her altar hath, and seize on that divine
Image which fell, men say, into this shrine
From heaven. This I must seize by chance or plot
Or peril--clearer word was uttered not--
And bear to Attic earth. If this be done,
I should have peace from all my malison.