Page:Tragedies of Euripides (Way 1894) v1.djvu/237

Rh Her feet, appalled by this my ghostly phantom.

Hecuba, dressed as a slave, and supported by fellow-captives, appears coming out of Agamemnon's tent.

Mother, who after royal halls hast seen

The day of thraldom, how thy depth of woe

Equals thine height of weal! A God bears down

The scale with olden bliss heaped, ruining thee.

[Exit.]

Lead forth, O my children, the stricken in years from the tent.

O lead her, upbearing the steps of your fellow-thrall

Now, O ye daughters of Troy, but of old your queen.

Clasp me, uphold, help onward the eld-forspent,

Laying hold of my wrinkled hand, lest for weakness I fall;

And, sustained by a curving arm, thereon as I lean,

I will hasten onward with tottering pace,

Speeding my feet in a laggard's race.

O lightning-splendour of Zeus, O mirk of the night,

Why quake I for visions in slumber that haunt me

With terrors, with phantoms? O Earth's majestic might,

Mother of dreams that hover in dusk-winged flight,

I cry to the vision of darkness "Avaunt thee!"—

The dream of my son who was sent unto Thrace to be saved from the slaughter,

The dream that I saw of Polyxena's doom, my dear-loved daughter,

Which I saw, which I knew, which abideth to daunt me.