Hecuba.
O horror unspeakable, nameless, beyond all wonder!—
Impious, unbearable!—Where are they, friendship and truth?
O accursèd of men, lo, how hast thou carved asunder
His flesh!—how thy knife, when my child's limbs quivered thereunder,
Hath slashed him and mangled, and thou wast unmelted of ruth!720
Chorus.
O hapless, how a God, whose hand on thee
Is heavy, above all mortals heaps thee pain!
But lo, I see our master towering nigh,
Agamemnon: friends, henceforth hold we our peace.725
Enter Agamemnon.
Agamemnon.
Why stay'st thou, Hecuba, thy child to entomb
According to Talthybius' word to me
That of the Argives none should touch thy daughter?
Wherefore we let her be, and touch her not.
Yet loiterest thou, that wonder stirreth me.730
I come to speed thee hence; for all things there
Are well wrought—if herein may aught be well.
Ha, who is this that by the tents I see?
What Trojan dead?—No Argive this, the robes
That shroud the body make report to me.735
Hecuba (aside).[1]
Hapless!—myself I name in naming thee—
- ↑ c.f. Hen. VI, Part 1. Act v. iii. for a closely similar series of asides.
