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Beat, beat thine head:

Beat with the wailing chime

Of hands lifted in time:

Beat and bleed for the dead.

Woe is me for the dead!

O Women! Ye, mine own

[She rises bewildered, as though she had seen a vision.

Hecuba, speak!

Thine are we all. Oh, ere thy bosom break

Lo, I have seen the open hand of God;

And in it nothing, nothing, save the rod

Of mine affliction, and the eternal hate,

Beyond all lands, chosen and lifted great

For Troy! Vain, vain were prayer and incense-swell

And bulls' blood on the altars! All is well.

Had He not turned us in His hand, and thrust

Our high things low and shook our hills as dust,

We had not been this splendour, and our wrong

An everlasting music for the song

Of earth and heaven!

Go, women: lay our dead

In his low sepulchre. He hath his meed

Of robing. And, methinks, but little care

Toucheth the tomb, if they that moulder there