O ships, O crowding faces
  Of ships[9], O hurrying beat
  Of oars as of crawling feet,
How found ye our holy places? 
Threading the narrows through,
  Out from the gulfs of the Greek,
Out to the clear dark blue,
  With hate ye came and with joy,
And the noise of your music flew,
  Clarion and pipe did shriek,
As the coiled cords ye threw,
  Held in the heart of Troy!

What sought ye then that ye came? 
  A woman, a thing abhorred: 
  A King’s wife that her lord
Hateth:  and Castor’s[10] shame
  Is hot for her sake, and the reeds
Of old Eurotas stir
With the noise of the name of her. 
She slew mine ancient King,
The Sower of fifty Seeds[11],
  And cast forth mine and me,
  As shipwrecked men, that cling
    To a reef in an empty sea.

Who am I that I sit
  Here at a Greek king’s door,
Yea, in the dust of it? 
  A slave that men drive before,
A woman that hath no home,
  Weeping alone for her dead;
  A low and bruised head,
And the glory struck therefrom.
[She starts up from her solitary brooding, and calls to the other
Trojan Women in the huts.

O Mothers of the Brazen Spear,
  And maidens, maidens, brides of shame,
  Troy is a smoke, a dying flame;
Together we will weep for her: 
I call ye as a wide-wing’d bird
  Calleth the children of her fold,

To cry, ah, not the cry men heard
   In Ilion, not the songs of old,
That echoed when my hand was true
     On Priam’s sceptre, and my feet
     Touched on the stone one signal beat,
   And out the Dardan music rolled;
And Troy’s great Gods gave ear thereto.

[The door of one of the huts on the right opens, and the Women steal out severally, startled and afraid.

FIRST WOMAN.

[Strophe I.

How say’st thou?  Whither moves thy cry,
   Thy bitter cry?  Behind our door
   We heard thy heavy heart outpour
Its sorrow:  and there shivered by
      Fear and a quick sob shaken
From prisoned hearts that shall be free no more!

HECUBA.

Child, ’tis the ships that stir upon the shore....

SECOND WOMAN.

     The ships, the ships awaken!

THIRD WOMAN.

Dear God, what would they?  Overseas
Bear me afar to strange cities?

HECUBA.

Nay, child, I know not.  Dreams are these,
     Fears of the hope-forsaken.

FIRST WOMAN.

Awake, O daughters of affliction, wake
And learn your lots!  Even now the Argives break
     Their camp for sailing!

HECUBA.

Ah, not Cassandra!  Wake not her
   Whom God hath maddened, lest the foe
Mock at her dreaming.  Leave me clear
   From that one edge of woe. 
O Troy, my Troy, thou diest here
   Most lonely; and most lonely we
   The living wander forth from thee,
     And the dead leave thee wailing!