Page:Tragedies of Euripides (Way 1898) v3.djvu/511

Rh

Where shall I light on a Trojan chief?

O where shall Hector be found of my quest

Slumbering yet in shield-fenced rest?

Unto whom of your chiefs shall I tell our grief?

Ah our calamities!—ah for the deeds in the night

Unto Thracia wrought of the felon who vanished from sight,

Who hath knit up a skein of misery manifest!

Some ill, meseems, to Thracia's company

Befalls—if this man's words mean aught for me.

Undone is our host, laid low is our king

By a deadly stab, by a stroke of guile!

Alas and alas! woe worth the while!

Ah, how am I inly racked by the sting

Of my gory wound! Would God I might straightway die!

Was it meet that so soon as he came, your Troy's ally,

Rhesus and I should perish by end so vile?

Lo, not in riddles doth he publish this:

Nay, plainly of allies destroyed he tells.

Ill hath been wrought us—shame, to crown that "ill,"

The foulest shame! Yea, double ill is this!

To die with fame, if one must die, I trow,