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EURIPIDES.
Hecuba.
If he doth live. I doubt: so dark is all.
Polyxena.
He lives, and he shall close thy dying eyes.430
Hecuba.
I—I have died ere dying, through my woes.
Polyxena.
Muffle mine head, Odysseus, and lead on.
For, ere ye slay me, hath my mother's moan
Melted mine heart, and mine is melting hers.
O Light!—for yet on thy name may I call—435
Yet all my share in thee is that scant space
Hence to the sword-edge and Achilles' pyre.
[Exeunt Odysseus and Polyxena.
Hecuba.
Ah me! I swoon—beneath me fail my limbs!
O daughter, touch thy mother—reach thine hand—
Give it, nor childless leave me!—Friends—undone!—440
Oh thus to see that sister of Zeus' sons,
Helen the Spartan!—for by her bright eyes
In shameful fall she brought down prosperous Troy.[1]
[Swoons.
- ↑ These three lines, in which the spirit overcomes the flesh in a fierce rally of the failing powers, that the swooning mother may concentrate her burning sense of wrong, her impotent longing for vengeance, in a curse upon the author of her woes, are so true to human nature, so appropriate to the character of Hecuba, that it seems strange that commentators should have proposed to omit them as
