Her feet, appalled by this my ghostly phantom.
Hecuba, dressed as a slave, and supported by fellow-captives, appears coming out of Agamemnon's tent.
Mother, who after royal halls hast seen55
The day of thraldom, how thy depth of woe
Equals thine height of weal! A God bears down
The scale with olden bliss heaped, ruining thee.
Hecuba.
Lead forth, O my children, the stricken in years from the tent.
O lead her, upbearing the steps of your fellow-thrall60
Now, O ye daughters of Troy, but of old your queen.
Clasp me, uphold, help onward the eld-forspent,
Laying hold of my wrinkled hand, lest for weakness I fall;
And, sustained by a curving arm, thereon as I lean,
I will hasten onward with tottering pace,
Speeding my feet in a laggard's race.
O lightning-splendour of Zeus, O mirk of the night,
Why quake I for visions in slumber that haunt me
With terrors, with phantoms? O Earth's majestic might,70
Mother of dreams that hover in dusk-winged flight,
I cry to the vision of darkness "Avaunt thee!"—
The dream of my son who was sent unto Thrace to be saved from the slaughter,
The dream that I saw of Polyxena's doom, my dear-loved daughter,
Which I saw, which I knew, which abideth to daunt me.
