The Queen, ye Watchers! See, she falls, she falls,
Rigid without a word! O sorry thralls,
Too late! And will ye leave her downstricken,
A woman, and so old? Raise her again!
[Some women go to Hecuba, but she refuses their aid and speaks without
rising.
Hecuba
Let lie ... the love we seek not is no love....
This ruined body! Is the fall thereof
Too deep for all that now is over me
Of anguish, and hath been, and yet shall be?
Ye Gods.... Alas! Why call on things so weak
For aid? Yet there is something that doth seek,
Crying, for God, when one of us hath woe.
O, I will think of things gone long ago
And weave them to a song, like one more tear
In the heart of misery.... All kings we were;
And I must wed a king. And sons I brought
My lord King, many sons ... nay, that were naught;
But high strong princes, of all Troy the best.
Hellas nor Troas nor the garnered East
Held such a mother! And all these things beneath
The Argive spear I saw cast down in death,
And shore these tresses at the dead men's feet.
Studies
