Hecuba
Euripides
Euripides. The Plays of Euripides, Translated into English Prose from the Text of Paley. Vol. II. Coleridge, Edward P., translator. London: George Bell and Sons, 1891.
- Yes, if he lives, which I doubt; so luckless am I in every way.
- He lives; and, when you die, he will close your eyes.
- I am dead; sorrow has forestalled death here.
- Come veil my head, Odysseus, and take me away; for now, before the fatal blow, my heart is melted by my mother’s wailing, and hers by mine.
- O light of day! for still I may call you by your name, though now my share in you is only the time I take to go between Achilles’ tomb and the sword. Odysseus and his attendants lead Polyxena away.
- Alas! I faint; my limbs sink under me. O my daughter, embrace your mother, stretch out your hand,
- give it to me; do not leave me childless! Ah, friends! it is my death-blow. Oh! to see that Spartan woman, Helen, sister of the sons of Zeus, in such a plight; for her bright eyes have caused the shameful fall of Troy’s once prosperous town. Hecuba sinks fainting to the ground.
- O breeze, breeze of the sea,
- that wafts swift galleys, ocean’s coursers, across the surging main! Where will you bear me, the sorrowful one? To whose house shall I be brought, to be his slave and chattel?
- to some haven in the Dorian land, or in Phthia, where men say Apidanus, father of fairest streams, makes fat and rich the soil?