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Read Ebook: The Trojan women of Euripides by Euripides BCE BCE Murray Gilbert Translator
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Ebook has 246 lines and 15457 words, and 5 pages
PALLAS.
And no man rose and smote him; not a frown Nor word from all the Greeks!
POSEIDON.
And 'twas thine hand That gave them Troy!
PALLAS.
Therefore with thee I stand To smite them.
POSEIDON.
All thou cravest, even now Is ready in mine heart. What seekest thou?
PALLAS.
An homecoming that striveth ever more And cometh to no home.
POSEIDON.
Here on the shore Wouldst hold them or amid mine own salt foam?
PALLAS.
When the last ship hath bared her sail for home! Zeus shall send rain, long rain and flaw of driven Hail, and a whirling darkness blown from heaven; To me his levin-light he promiseth O'er ships and men, for scourging and hot death: Do thou make wild the roads of the sea, and steep With war of waves and yawning of the deep, Till dead men choke Euboea's curling bay. So Greece shall dread even in an after day My house, nor scorn the Watchers of strange lands!
POSEIDON.
I give thy boon unbartered. These mine hands Shall stir the waste Aegean; reefs that cross The Delian pathways, jag-torn Myconos, Scyros and Lemnos, yea, and storm-driven Caph?reus with the bones of drown?d men Shall glut him.--Go thy ways, and bid the Sire Yield to thine hand the arrows of his fire. Then wait thine hour, when the last ship shall wind Her cable coil for home! , O hurrying beat Of oars as of crawling feet, How found ye our holy places? Threading the narrows through, Out from the gulfs of the Greek, Out to the clear dark blue, With hate ye came and with joy, And the noise of your music flew, Clarion and pipe did shriek, As the coil?d cords ye threw, Held in the heart of Troy!
What sought ye then that ye came? A woman, a thing abhorred: A King's wife that her lord Hateth: and Castor's shame Is hot for her sake, and the reeds Of old Eur?tas stir With the noise of the name of her. She slew mine ancient King, The Sower of fifty Seeds, And cast forth mine and me, As shipwrecked men, that cling To a reef in an empty sea.
Who am I that I sit Here at a Greek king's door, Yea, in the dust of it? A slave that men drive before, A woman that hath no home, Weeping alone for her dead; A low and bruis?d head, And the glory struck therefrom. on the hill, Where the proud water craveth still Its broken-hearted minister.
ANOTHER.
God guide me yet to Theseus' land, The gentle land, the famed afar....
ANOTHER.
But not the hungry foam--Ah, never!-- Of fierce Eurotas, Helen's river, To bow to Menelaus' hand, That wasted Troy with war!
A WOMAN.
TALTHYBIUS.
Thou know'st me, Hecuba. Often have I crossed Thy plain with tidings from the Hellene host. 'Tis I, Talthybius.... Nay, of ancient use Thou know'st me. And I come to bear thee news.
HECUBA.
Ah me, 'tis here, 'tis here, Women of Troy, our long embosomed fear!
TALTHYBIUS.
The lots are cast, if that it was ye feared.
HECUBA.
What lord, what land.... Ah me, Phthia or Thebes, or sea-worn Thessaly?
TALTHYBIUS.
Each hath her own. Ye go not in one herd.
HECUBA.
Say then what lot hath any? What of joy Falls, or can fall on any child of Troy?
TALTHYBIUS.
I know: but make thy questions severally.
HECUBA.
My stricken one must be Still first. Say how Cassandra's portion lies.
TALTHYBIUS.
Chosen from all for Agamemnon's prize!
HECUBA.
How, for his Spartan bride A tirewoman? For Helen's sister's pride?
TALTHYBIUS.
Nay, nay: a bride herself, for the King's bed.
HECUBA.
The sainted of Apollo? And her own Prize that God promised Out of the golden clouds, her virgin crown?...
TALTHYBIUS.
He loved her for that same strange holiness.
HECUBA.
Daughter, away, away, Cast all away, The haunted Keys, the lonely stole's array That kept thy body like a sacred place!
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