Hecuba.
O hapless I!—not—not the bacchant head
Of prophetess Kassandra bring'st thou hither?
Handmaid.
Thou nam'st the living: but the dead—this dead,
Bewailest not,—look, the dead form is bared!
Seems it not strange—worse than all boding fears?680
Hecuba.
Ah me, my son!—I see Polydorus dead,
Whom in his halls I deemed the Thracian warded.
O wretch! it is my death—I am no more!
O my child, O my child!
Mine anguish shall thrill685
Through a wail shrilling wild
In the ears of me still
Which pealed there but now from the throat of a
demon, a herald of ill.
Handmaid.
Didst thou then know thy son's doom, hapless one?
Hecuba.
Beyond, beyond belief, new woes I see.
Ills upon ills throng one after other:690
Never day shall pass by without tear, without sigh,
nor mine anguish refrain.
Chorus.
Dread, O dread evils, hapless queen, we suffer.
