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How fierce a slave! O Heralds, Heralds! Yea,

Voices of Death; and mists are over them

Of dead men's anguish, like a diadem,

These weak abhorrèd things that serve the hate

Of kings and peoples!

To Odysseus' gate

My mother goeth, say'st thou? Is God's word

As naught, to me in silence ministered,

That in this place she dies? (To herself) No more; no more!

Why should I speak the shame of them, before

They come? Little he knows, that hard-beset

Spirit, what deeps of woe await him yet;

Till all these tears of ours and harrowings

Of Troy, by his, shall be as golden things.

Ten years behind ten years athwart his way

Waiting: and home, lost and unfriended

Nay:

Why should Odysseus' labours vex my breath?

On; hasten; guide me to the house of Death,

To lie beside my bridegroom!

Thou Greek King,

Who deem'st thy fortune now so high a thing,

Thou dust of the earth, a lowlier bed I see,

In darkness, not in light, awaiting thee:

And with thee, with thee there, where yawneth plain

A rift of the hills, raging with winter rain,