Classic Poem

The conqueror, Ulysses, now set sail,
for Lemnos, country of Hypsipyle,
and for the land of Thoas, famed afar,
those regions infamous in olden days,
where women slew their husbands. So he went
that he might capture and bring back with him
the arrows of brave Hercules. When these
were given back to the Greeks, their lord with them,
a final hand at last prevailed to end
that long fought war. Both Troy and Priam fell,
and Priam's wretched wife lost all she had,
until at last she lost her human form.
Her savage barkings frightened foreign lands,
where the long Hellespont is narrowed down.

Great Troy was burning: while the fire still raged,
Jove's altar drank old Priam's scanty blood.
The priestess of Apollo then, alas!
Was dragged by her long hair, while up towards heaven
she lifted supplicating hands in vain.
The Trojan matrons, clinging while they could
to burning temples and ancestral gods,
victorious Greeks drag off as welcome spoil.
Astyanax was hurled down from the very tower
from which he often had looked forth and seen
his father, by his mother pointed out,
when Hector fought for honor and his country's weal.

Now Boreas counsels to depart. The sails,
moved by a prosperous breeze, resound and wave —
the Trojan women cry, — " Farewell to Troy!
Ah, we are hurried off! " and, falling down,
they kiss the soil, and leave the smoking roofs
of their loved native land. The last to go
on board the fleet was Hecuba, a sight
most pitiful. She was found among the tombs
of her lost sons. While she embraced each urn
and fondly kissed their bones, Ulysses came
with ruthless hands and bore her off, his prize
she in her bosom took away the urn
of Hector only, and upon his grave
she left some white hair taken from her head,
a meager gift, her white hair and her tears.

Across the strait from Troy, there is a land
claimed by Bistonian men, and in that land
was a rich palace, built there by a king
named Polymnestor. To him the Phrygian king
in secret gave his youngest son to rear,
his Polydorus, safe from Troy and war,
a prudent course, if he had not sent gold
arousing greed, incitement to a crime.
Soon, when the fortunes of the Trojans fell,
that wicked king of Thrace took his own sword,
and pierced the throat of his poor foster son
and then, as if the deed could be concealed,
if he removed the body, hurled the boy
from a wild cliff into the waves below.

Until the sea might be more calm, and gales
of wind might be subdued, Atrides moored
his fleet of ships upon the Thracian shore;
there, from wide gaping earth, Achilles rose,
as large as when he lived, with look as fierce,
as when his sword once threatened Agamemnon.
" Forgetting me do you depart, O Greeks? "
He said, " And is your grateful! memory
of all my worth interred with my bones?
Do not do so. And that my sepulchre
may have due worship, let Polyxena
be immolated to appease the ghost:
of dead Achilles. " Fiercely so he spoke.

The old friends of Achilles all obeyed
his unforgiving shade; and instantly
the noble and unhappy virgin — brave,
more like a man than woman — was torn from
her mother's bosom, cherished more by her,
since widowed and alone. And then they led
the virgin as a sacrifice from there
up to the cruel altar. When the maid
observed the savage rites prepared for her,
and when she noticed Neoptolemus
stand by her with his cruel sword in hand,
his fixed eyes on her countenance; she said: —

" Do not delay my generous gift of blood,
with no resistance thrust the ready steel
into my throat or breast! " And then she laid
both throat and bosom bare. " Polyxena
would never wish to live in slavery.
And such rites win no favor from a god.
Only I fondly wish my mother might
not know that I have died. My love of her
takes from my joy in death and gives me fear.
Not my death truly, but her own sad life
should be the most lamented in her tears.
Now let your men stand back, that I may go
with dignity down to the Stygian shades,
and, if my plea is just, let no man's hand
touch my pure virgin body. A nobler gift
to him, whoever he may be, whom you
desire to placate with my death today,
shall be a free maid's blood. But, if my words —
my parting wish, has power to touch your hearts,
(King Priam's daughter, not a captive, pleads)
freely return my body to my mother,
let her not pay with gold for the sad right
to bury me — but only with her tears!
Yes, when she could, she also paid with gold. "

After she said these words, the people could
no more restrain their tears; but no one saw
her shed one tear. Even the priest himself,
reluctantly and weeping, drove the steel
into her proffered breast. On failing knees
she sank down to the earth; but still maintained
a countenance undaunted to the last:
and, even unto death, it was her care
to cover all that ought to be concealed,
and save the value of chaste modesty.

The Trojan matrons took her and recalled,
lamenting, all the sons of Priam dead,
the wealth of blood one house had shed for all.
And they bewailed the chaste Polyxena
and you, her mother, only lately called
a royal mother and a royal wife, —
the soul of Asia's fair prosperity;
now lowest fallen in all the wreck of Troy.

The conquering Ulysses only claimed
her his because she had brought Hector forth:
and Hector hardly found a master for
his mother. She continued to embrace
the body of a soul so brave, and shed
her tears, as she had shed them often before
for country lost, for sons, for royal mate.
She bathed her daughter's wounds with tears and kissed
them with her lips and once more beat her breast.
Her white hair streamed down in the clotting blood,
she tore her breast, and this and more she said:

" My daughter, what further sorrow can be mine?
My daughter you lie dead, I see your wounds —
they are indeed my own. Lest I should lose
one child of mine without a cruel sword,
you have your wound. I thought, because
you were a woman, you were safe from swords.
But you, a woman, felt the deadly steel.
That same Achilles, who has given to death
so many of your brothers, caused your death,
the bane of Troy and the serpent by my nest!
When Paris and when Phoebus with their shafts
had laid him low, " Ah, now at least," I said,
" Achilles will no longer cause me dread."
Yet even then he still was to be feared.
For him I have been fertile! Mighty Troy
now lies in ruin, and the public woe
is ended in one vast calamity.
For me alone the woe of Troy still lives.

" But lately on the pinnacle of fame,
surrounded by my powerful sons-in-law,
daughters, and daughters-in-law, and strong
in my great husband, I am exiled now,
and destitute, and forced from the sad tombs
of those I love, to wretched slavery,
serving Penelope: who showing me
to curious dames of Ithaca, will point
and say, while I am bending to my task,
" Look at that woman who was widely known,
the mother of great Hector, once the wife
of Priam!" After so many have been lost,
now you, last comfort of a mother's grief,
must make atonement on the foeman's tomb.
I bore a victim for my enemy.

" Why do I live — an iron witted wretch?
Why do I linger? Why does cruel age
detain me? Why, pernicious deities,
thus hold me to this earth, unless you will
that I may weep at future funerals?
After the fall of Troy, who would suppose
King Priam could be happy? Blest in death,
he has not seen my daughter's dreadful fate.
He lost at once his kingdom and his life.

" Can I imagine you, a royal maid,
will soon be honored with due funeral rites,
and will be buried in our family tomb?
Such fortune comes no more to your sad house.
A drift of foreign sand will be your grave,
the parting gift will be your mother's tears.
We have lost everything! But no, there is
one reason why I should endure a while.
His mother's dearest, now her only child,
once youngest of that company of sons,
my Polydorus lives here on these shores
protected by the friendly Thracian king.
Then why delay to bathe these cruel wounds,
her dear face spattered with the dreadful blood? "

So Hecuba went wailing towards the shore
with aged step and tearing her gray hair.
At last the unhappy mother said, " Give me
an urn; O, Trojan women! " for, she wished
to dip up salt sea water. But just then,
she saw the corpse of her last son, thrown out
upon the shore; her Polydorus, killed,
disfigured with deep wounds of Thracian swords.

The Trojan women cried aloud, and she
was struck dumb with her agony, which quite
consumed both voice and tears within her heart —
rigid and still she seemed as a hard rock.
And now she gazes at the earth in front
now lifts her haggard face up toward the skies,
now scans that body lying stark and dead,
now scans his wounds and most of all the wounds.
She arms herself and draws up all her wrath.
It burned as if she still held regal power
she gave up all life to the single thought
of quick revenge. Just as a lioness
rages when plundered of her suckling cub
and follows on his trail the unseen foe,
so, Hecuba with rage mixed in her grief
forgetful of her years, not her intent,
went hastily to Polymnestor, who
contrived this dreadful murder, and desired
an interview, pretending it was her wish
to show him hidden gold, for her lost son.

The Odrysian king believed it all:
accustomed to the love of gain, he went
with her, in secret, to the spot she chose.
Then craftily he said in his bland way:
" Oh, Hecuba, you need not wait, give now,
munificently to your son — and all
you give, and all that you have given,
by the good gods, I swear, shall be his own. "

She eyed him sternly as he spoke
and swore so falsely. — Then her rage boiled over,
and, seconded by all her captive train,
she flew at him and drove her fingers deep
in his perfidious eyes; and tore them from
his face — and plunged her hands into the raw
and bleeding sockets (passion made her strong),
defiled with his bad blood. How could she tear
his eyes, gone from their seats? She wildly gouged
the sightless sockets of his bleeding face!

The Thracians, angered by such violence done
upon their king, immediately attacked
the Trojan matron with their stones and darts
but she with hoarse growling and snapping jaws
sprang at the stones, and, when she tried to speak,
she barked like a fierce dog. The place still bears
a name suggested by her hideous change.
And she, long mindful! of her old time woe,
ran howling dismally in Thracian fields.

Her sad fate moved the Trojans and the Greeks,
her friends and foes, and all the heavenly gods.
Yes all, for even the sister-wife of Jove
denied that Hecuba deserved such fate.