ile yet the Furies suffer thee to
have thy right faculties.

ORES. Wilt thou tell any news? and if good indeed, thou art conferring
pleasure; but if it pertain at all to mischief--I have enough distress.

ELEC. Menelaus has arrived, the brother of thy father, but his ships are
moored in the Nauplian bay.

ORES. How sayest? Is he come, a light in mine and thy sufferings, a man of
kindred blood, and that hath received benefits from our father?

ELEC. He is come; take this a sure proof of my words, bringing with him
Helen from the walls of Troy.

ORES. Had he been saved alone, he had been more blest. But if he brings his
wife, he has arrived with a mighty evil.

ELEC. Tyndarus begat an offspring of daughters, a conspicuous mark for
blame, and infamous throughout Greece.

ORES. Do thou then be unlike the bad, for it is in thy power. And not only
say, but also hold these sentiments.

ELEC. Alas! my brother, thine eye rolls wildly; quick art thou changed to
madness, so late in thy senses.

ORES. O mother, I implore thee, urge not on me those Furies gazing blood,
horrid with snakes, for these, these are leaping around me.

ELEC. Remain, O wretched man, calmly on thy couch, for thou seest none of
those things, which thou fanciest thou seest plainly.

ORES. O Phoebus, these dire Goddesses in the shape of dogs will kill me,
these gorgon-visaged ministers of hell.

ELEC. I will not let thee go, but, putting my arm around thee, will stop
thy starting into those unfortunate convulsions.

ORES. Loose me. Thou art one of my Furies, and seizest me by the middle,
that thou mayest hurl me into Tartarus.

ELEC. Oh! wretched me! what assistance can I obtain, since we have on us
the vengeful wrath of heaven!

ORES. Give me my bow of horn, the gift of Phoebus, with which Apollo said I
should repel the Fiends, if they appalled me by their maddened raging.

ELEC. Shall any God be wounded by mortal hand? (Note [B].)

ORES. _Yes. She shall,_ if she will not depart from my sight... Hear ye
not--see ye not the winged shafts impelled from the distant-wounding bow?
Ha! ha! Why tarry ye yet? Skim the high air with your wings, and impeach
the oracles of Phoebus.--Ah! why am I thus disquieted, heaving my panting
breath from my lungs? Whither, whither have I wandered from my couch? For
from the waves again I see a calm.--Sister, why weepest, hiding thine eyes
beneath thy vests, I am ashamed to have thee a partner in my sufferings,
an