POLYX. O mother,
What mean you by those shrieks? what fresh event
Proclaiming, from my chamber, like a bird,
Have you constrained me, urged by fear, to speed
My flight?
HEC. Ah, daughter!
POLYX. With foreboding voice,
Why do you call me? these are evil omens.
HEC. Alas! thy life, Polyxena.
POLYX. Speak out,
Nor aggravate the horrors yet untold
By long suspense. I fear, O mother, much
I fear. What mean those oft repeated groans?
HEC. Thou child of a most miserable mother!
POLYX. Why speak you thus?
HEC. The Greeks, with one consent,
Resolve that on the tomb of Peleus’ son
Thou shalt be sacrificed.
POLYX. What boundless woes
Are these which to your daughter you announce!
Yet, O my mother, with the tale proceed.
HEC. Of a most horrible report I speak,
Which says, that, by the suffrage of the Greeks,
It is resolved to take away thy life.
POLYX. O, my unhappy mother, doomed to suffer
Wrongs the most dreadful, doomed to lead a life
Of utter wretchedness: what grievous curse,
Such as no language can express, on you
Hath some malignant demon hurled! no more
Can I, your daughter, share the galling yoke
Of servitude with your forlorn old age;
For like some lion’s whelp, or heifer bred
Upon the mountains, hurried from your arms
Shall you behold me, and with severed head
Consigned to Pluto’s subterraneous realms
Of darkness, there among the silent dead,
Wretch that I am, shall I be laid. These tears
Of bitter lamentation I for you,
For you, O mother, shed; but my own life
I heed not, nor the shame, nor fatal stroke,
For I in death a happier lot obtain.
CHOR. To thee, O Hecuba, with hasty step
Behold Ulysses some new message brings.