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!
[Uncovers the corpse.
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.
