Oh! mother, mother, why do you call so loud? what news is it you have proclaimed, scaring me, like a cowering bird, from my chamber by this alarm?HecubaAlas, my daughter!PolyxenaWhy this ominous address? it means sorrow for me.HecubaWoe for your life!PolyxenaTell it, hide it no longer. Ah mother! how I dread, I dread the import of your loud laments.HecubaAh my daughter! a luckless mother’s child!PolyxenaWhy do you tell me this?HecubaThe Argives with one consent are eager for your sacrifice to the son of Peleus at his tomb.PolyxenaAh! my mother! how can you speak of such a dire mischance? Tell me all, mother, yes all!HecubaIt is an ill-boding rumor I tell, my child;they bring me word that sentence is passed upon your life by the Argives’ vote.
PolyxenaAlas, for your cruel sufferings, my persecuted mother! woe for your life of grief! What grievous outrage has some fiend sent on you, hateful, horrible? No more shall I your daughter share your bondage, hapless youth on hapless age attending.For you, alas! will see me, your hapless child, torn from your arms like a calf of the hills, and sent beneath the darkness of the earth with severed throat for Hades, where with the dead shall I be laid, ah me! For your unhappiness I weep with plaintive wail, mother; but for my own life, its ruin and its outrage, never a tear I shed; no, death has become to me a happier lot than life.