Page:Tragedies of Euripides (Way 1896) v2.djvu/194

Will ye not help her, heartless ones, but leave
Her grey hairs prostrate? Bear ye up her frame. 465

Leave me—false kindness were unkindness, girls,—
So fallen to lie. Well may I sink 'neath all
I suffer, and have suffered, and shall suffer.
O Gods!—to sorry helpers I appeal;
Yet to invoke the Gods hath some fair show 470
When child of man on evil fortune lights.
Fain am I first to chant mine olden bliss;
So shall I wake more ruth for these my woes.
1 was a princess, wedded to a king,
And mother I became of princely sons, 475
Nor ciphers these, but Phrygia's mightiest chiefs:
Trojan nor Greek dame, nor barbarian,
Might ever boast her mother of such as these.
Yet these I saw by Hellene spears laid low,
And shore these tresses at my dead sons' graves. 480
Their father Priam—not from other lips
I heard and wept his doom, but these mine eyes
Beheld him butchered on the altar-stone,
Troy sacked, the maiden daughters I had nursed
For pride of princely spousals without peer, 485
Torn from mine arms—for others reared I them!
No hope have I of being seen of them,
No, nor of seeing them for evermore.
And last, the topstone of my misery,
Old, and a slave, to Hellas shall I come; 490
And what tasks for mine eld are most unmeet,
To these will they appoint me, to keep keys,
A portress,—me, who gave to Hector birth!—
Or knead their bread, and couch upon the ground