The thing must now be done, and done with speed.
O death, O death, come and thy office do;
Long, where I go, our fellowship will be.
O thou glad daylight, which I now behold,
O sun, that ridest in the firmament,
I greet you, and shall greet you never more.
O light, O sacred soil of my own land,
O my ancestral home, my Salamis,
Famed Athens and my old Athenian mates,
Rivers and springs and plains of Troy, farewell;
Farewell all things in which I lived my life;
'Tis the last word of Ajax to you all,
When next I speak 'twill be to those below.




ELECTRA.


The subject of the "Electra" of Sophocles is the same as that of the
"Choephoroe" (the Libation-bearers) of Aeschylus. It is the return of
Orestes from exile to take vengeance on Aegisthus and Clytaemnestra,
for their murder of his father, Agamemnon. Electra plays the same part
which she plays in the "Choephoroe," while her sister, Chrysothemis,
plays that of gentleness and comparative weakness. Orestes, in this
play, returns with a fictitious story of his death which throws
Aegisthus and Clytaemnestra off their guard.

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