My stricken one must be Still first. Say how Ca.s.sandra'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 G.o.d 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[15], the lonely stole's array That kept thy body like a sacred place!

TALTHYBIUS.

Is't not rare fortune that the King hath smiled On such a maid?

HECUBA.

What of that other child Ye reft from me but now?

TALTHYBIUS (_speaking with some constraint_).

Polyxena? Or what child meanest thou?

HECUBA.

The same. What man now hath her, or what doom?

TALTHYBIUS.

She rests apart, to watch Achilles' tomb.

HECUBA.

To watch a tomb? My daughter? What is this?...

Speak, Friend? What fashion of the laws of Greece?

TALTHYBIUS.

Count thy maid happy! She hath naught of ill To fear....

HECUBA.

What meanest thou? She liveth still?

TALTHYBIUS.

I mean, she hath one toil[16] that holds her free From all toil else.

HECUBA.

What of Andromache, Wife of mine iron-hearted Hector, where Journeyeth she?

TALTHYBIUS.

Pyrrhus, Achilles' son, hath taken her.

HECUBA.

And I, whose slave am I, The shaken head, the arm that creepeth by, Staff-crutched, like to fall?

TALTHYBIUS.

Odysseus[17], Ithaca's king, hath thee for thrall.

HECUBA.

Beat, beat the crownless head: Rend the cheek till the tears run red!

A lying man and a pitiless Shall be lord of me, a heart full-flown With scorn of righteousness: O heart of a beast where law is none, Where all things change so that l.u.s.t be fed, The oath and the deed, the right and the wrong, Even the hate of the forked tongue: Even the hate turns and is cold, False as the love that was false of old!

O Women of Troy, weep for me!

Yea, I am gone: I am gone my ways.

Mine is the crown of misery, The bitterest day of all our days.

LEADER.

Thy fate thou knowest, Queen: but I know not What lord of South or North has won my lot.

TALTHYBIUS.

Go, seek Ca.s.sandra, men! Make your best speed, That I may leave her with the King, and lead These others to their divers lords.... Ha, there!

What means that sudden light? Is it the flare Of torches?

[_Light is seen shining through the crevices of the second hut on the right. He moves towards it._

Would they fire their prison rooms, Or how, these dames of Troy?--'Fore G.o.d, the dooms Are known, and now they burn themselves and die[18]