Troades: Act I

Hecuba: Whoe'er in royal power has put his trust,And proudly lords it in his princely halls;Who fears no shifting of the winds of fate,But fondly gives his soul to present joys:Let him my lot and thine, O Troy, behold.For of a truth did fortune never showIn plainer wise the frailty of the propThat doth support a king; since by her handBrought low, behold, proud Asia's capitol,The work of heavenly hands, lies desolate.From many lands the warring princes cameTo aid her cause: from where the TanaïsHis frigid waves in seven-fold channel pours;And that far land which greets the newborn day,Where Tigris mingles with the ruddy seaHis tepid waves; and where the Amazon,Within the view of wandering ScythiaArrays her virgin ranks by Pontus' shores.Yet here, o'erthrown, our ancient city lies,Herself upon herself in ruins laid;Her once proud walls in smouldering heaps recline,Mingling their ashes with our fallen homes.The palace flames on high, while far and nearThe stately city of AssaracusIs wrapped in gloomy smoke. Yet e'en the flamesKeep not the victor's greedy hands from spoil;And Troy, though in the grasp of fiery death,Is pillaged still. The face of heaven is hidBy that dense, wreathing smoke; the shining day,As if o'erspread by some thick, lowering cloud,Grows black and foul beneath the ashy storm.The victor stands with still unsated wrath,Eyeing that stubborn town of Ilium,And scarce at last forgives those ten long yearsOf bloody strife. Anon, as he beholdsThat mighty city, though in ruins laid,He starts with fear; and though he plainly seesHis foe o'ercome, he scarce can comprehendThat she could be o'ercome. The Dardan spoilIs heaped on high, a booty vast, which Greece,In all her thousand ships, can scarce bestow.Now witness, ye divinities whose faceWas set against our state, my fatherlandIn ashes laid; and thou, proud king of Troy,Who in thy city's overthrow hast foundA fitting tomb; thou shade of mighty Hector,In whose proud strength abiding, Ilium stood;Likewise ye thronging ghosts, my children all,But lesser shades: whatever ill has come;Whatever Phoebus' bride with frenzied speech,Though all discredited, hath prophesied;I, Hecuba, myself foresaw, what time,With unborn child o'erweighed, I dreamed a dreamThat I had borne a flaming brand. And though,Cassandra-like, I told my fears, my warnings,Like our Cassandra's words in after time,Were all in vain. 'Tis not the Ithacan,Nor yet his trusty comrade of the night,Nor that false traitor, Sinon, who has castThe flaming brands that wrought our overthrow:Mine is the fire--'tis by my brands ye burn.But why dost thou bewail the city's fall,With ancient gossip's prattle? Turn thy mind,Unhappy one, to nearer woes than these.Troy's fall, though sad, is ancient story now.I saw the horrid slaughter of the king,Defiling the holy altar with its stain,When bold Aeacides, with savage handEntwined in helpless Priam's hoary locks,Drew back his sacred head, and thrust the swordHilt-buried in his unresisting side.And when he plucked the deep-driven weapon back,So weak and bloodless was our agéd king,The deadly blade came almost stainless forth.Whose thirst for blood had not been satisfiedBy that old man just slipping o'er the vergeOf life? Whom would not heavenly witnessesRestrain from crime? Who would not stay his handBefore the sacred altar, last resortOf fallen thrones? Yet he, our noble Priam,The king, and father of so many kings,Lies like the merest peasant unentombed;And, though all Troy's aflame, there's not a brandTo light his pyre and give him sepulture.And still the heavenly powers are not appeased.Behold the urn; and, subject to its lot,The maids and matrons of our princely line,Who wait their future lords. To whom shall I,An agéd and unprized allotment, fall?One Grecian lord has fixed his longing eyesOn Hector's queen; another prays the lotTo grant to him the bride of Helenus;Antenor's spouse is object of desire,And e'en thy hand, Cassandra, hath its suitor:My lot alone they deprecate and fear.And can ye cease your plaints? O captive throng,Come beat upon your breasts, and let the soundOf your loud lamentations rise anew,The while we celebrate in fitting wiseTroy's funeral; let fatal Ida, seatOf that ill-omened judgment, straight resoundWith echoes of our pitiful refrain.

Chorus: Not an untrained band, to tears unknown,Thou callest to grief, for our tears have rainedIn streams unending through the years,Since the time when the Phrygian guest arrivedAt the friendly court of Tyndarus,Sailing the sea in his vessel framedFrom the sacred pines of Cybele.Ten winters have whitened Ida's slopes,So often stripped for our funeral pyres;Ten years have ripened the waving grainWhich the trembling reaper has garnered inFrom wide Sigean harvest-fields:But never a day was without its grief,Never a night but renewed our woe.Then on with the wailing and on with the blows;And thou, poor fate-smitten queen, be our guide,Our mistress in mourning; we'll obey thy commands,Well trained in the wild liturgy of despair.

Hecuba: Then, trusty comrades of our fate,Unbind your tresses and let them flowOver your shoulders bent with grief,The while with Troy's slow-cooling dustYe sprinkle them. Lay bare your arms,Strip from your breasts their covering;Why veil your beauty? Shame itselfIs held in captive bonds. And nowLet your hands wave free to the quickening blowsThat resound to your wailings. So, now are ye ready,And thus it is well. I behold once moreMy old-time Trojan band. Now stoopAnd fill your hands; 'tis right to takeHer dust at least from fallen Troy.Now let the long-pent grief leap forth,And surpass your accustomed bounds of woe.Oh, weep for Hector, wail and weep.

Chorus: Our hair, in many a funeral torn,We loose; and o'er our streaming locksTroy's glowing ashes lie bestrewn.From our shoulders the veiling garments fall,And our breasts invite the smiting hands.Now, now, O grief, put forth thy strength.Let the distant shores resound with our mournings;And let Echo who dwells in the slopes of the mountainsRepeat all our wailings, not, after her wont,With curt iteration returning the end.Let earth hear and heed; let the sea and the skyRecord all our grief. Then smite, O ye hands,With the strength of frenzy batter and bruise.With crying and blows and the pain of the smiting--Oh, weep for Hector, wail and weep.

Hecuba: Our hero, for thee the blows are descending,On arms and shoulders that stream with our blood;For thee our brows endure rough strokes,And our breasts are mangled with pitiless hands.Now flow the old wounds, reopened anew,That bled at thy death, the chief cause of our sorrow.O prop of our country, delayer of fate,Our Ilium's bulwark, our mighty defender,Our strong tower wast thou; secure on thy shoulders,Our city stood leaning through ten weary years.By thy power supported, with thee has she fallen,Our country and Hector united in doom.Now turn to another the tide of your mourning;Let Priam receive his due meed of your tears.

Chorus: Receive our lamentings, O Phrygia's ruler;We weep for thy death, who wast twice overcome.Naught once did Troy suffer while thou didst rule o'er her:Twice fell her proud walls from the blows of the Grecians,And twice was she pierced by great Hercules' darts.Now all of our Hecuba's offspring have perished,And the proud band of kings who came to our aid;Thy death is the last--our father, our ruler--Struck down as a victim to Jove the Almighty,All helpless and lone, a mute corpse on the ground.

Hecuba: Nay, give to another your tears and your mourning,And weep not the death of Priam our king.But call ye him blessed the rather; for free,To the deep world of shadows he travels, and neverUpon his bowed neck the base yoke shall he bear.No proud sons of Atreus shall call him their captive,No crafty Ulysses his eyes shall behold;As boast of their triumphs he shall not bear onwardIn humble submission their prizes of war.Those free, royal hands to the scepter accustomed,Shall never be bound at his back like a slave,As he follows the car of the triumphing chieftain,A king led in fetters, the gaze of the town.

Chorus: Hail! Priam the blessed we all do proclaim him;For himself and his kingdom he rules yet below;Now through the still depths of Elysium's shadows'Midst calm, happy spirits he seeks the great Hector.Then hail, happy Priam! Hail all who in battleHave lost life and country, but liberty gained.