Page:The Life of William Morris.djvu/196

ÆT. 32]

This feeling culminates in a weird lyric sung by Hecuba, while still Queen in Troy, and plotting with Paris the murder of Achilles in the temple to which he is to be lured by the forged letter of Polyxena. "Ah, times are changed, the merry days are gone," has been the recurrent burden of her long speech to Paris; and then all at once she breaks into strange ballad music:

In the scenes of the last night of Troy, as they are given in "The Descent from the Wooden Horse" and