Page:Trojan Women (Murray 1905).djvu/60

58 Didst leave, and spreadest sail for Cretan seas,

Far, far from me! And yet, how strange it is!

I ask not thee; I ask my own sad thought,

What was there in my heart, that I forgot

My home and land and all I loved, to fly

With a strange man? Surely it was not I,

But Cypris, there! Lay thou thy rod on her,

And be more high than Zeus and bitterer,

Who o'er all other spirits hath his throne,

But knows her chain must bind him. My wrong done

Hath its own pardon

One word yet thou hast,

Methinks, of righteous seeming. When at last

The earth for Paris oped and all was o'er,

And her strange magic bound my feet no more,

Why kept I still his house, why fled not I

To the Argive ships? Ah, how I strove to fly!

The old Gate-Warden could have told thee all,

My husband, and the watchers from the wall;

It was not once they took me, with the rope

Tied, and this body swung in the air, to grope

Its way toward thee, from that dim battlement.

Ah, husband still, how shall thy hand be bent

To slay me? Nay, if Right be come at last,

What shalt thou bring but comfort for pains past,

And harbour for a woman storm-driven:

A woman borne away by violent men:

And this one birthright of my beauty, this

That might have been my glory, lo, it is

A stamp that God hath burned, of slavery!

Alas! and if thou cravest still to be

As one set above gods, inviolate,

'Tis but a fruitless longing holds thee yet.