Aeschylus - The Eumenides Lines 232-275 lyrics

Orestes: Queen Athena, under Apollo's orders I have come. Receive me kindly. Curst and an outcast, no suppliant for purging ... my hands are clean. My murderous edge is blunted now, worn down at last on the outland homesteads, beaten paths of men. On and out over seas and dry frontiers, I kept alive the Prophet's strong commands. Struggling towards your house, your idol - (Taking the knees of Athena's idol in his arms.) Goddess, here I keep my watch, I await the consummation of my trial. (The furies enter in pursuit but cannot find Orestes who is entwined around Athena's idol The leader sees the footprints.) Leader: At last! The clear trail of the man. After it, silent but it tracks his guilt to light. He's wounded - go for the fawn, my hounds, the splash of blood, hunt him, rake him down. Oh, the labour, the man-k**ing labour. My lungs are bursting ... over the wide rolling earth we've ranged in flock, hurdling the waves in wingless flight and now we come, all hot pursuit, outracing ships astern - and now he's here, somewhere, cowering like a hare... the reek of human blood - it's laughter to my heart! (Inciting a pair of furies.) Look, look again, you two, scour the ground before he escapes - one dodge and the matricide slips free. (Seeing Orestes, one by one they press around him and Athena's idol.) furies: -There he is! Clutching the knees of power once again, twined in the d**hless goddess' idol, look, he wants to go on trial for his crimes. - Never... the mother's blood that wets the ground, you can never bring it back, dear god, the Earth drinks, and the running life is gone. -No, you'll give me blood for blood, you must! Out of your living marrow I will drain my red libation, out of your veins I s** my food, my raw, brutal cups - - Wither you alive, drag you down and there you pay, agony for mother-k**ing agony! - And there you will see them all. Every mortal who outraged god or guest or loving parent: each receives the pain his pains exact. - A mighty god is Hades. There at the last reckoning underneath the earth he scans all, he squares all men's accounts and graves them on the tablets of his mind. (Orestes remains impa**ive.) ORESTES: I have suffered into truth. Well I know the countless arts of purging, where to speak, where silence is the rule. In this ordeal a compelling master urges me to speak.