[One of the huts on the left is now open, and the rest of the CHORUS come out severally.  Their number eventually amounts to fifteen.

FOURTH WOMAN.

[Antistrophe I.

Out of the tent of the Greek king
   I steal, my Queen, with trembling breath: 
   What means thy call?  Not death; not death! 
They would not slay so low a thing!

FIFTH WOMAN.

O, ’tis the ship-folk crying
To deck the galleys:  and we part, we part!

HECUBA.

Nay, daughter:  take the morning to thine heart.

FIFTH WOMAN.

          My heart with dread is dying!

SIXTH WOMAN.

An herald from the Greek hath come!

FIFTH WOMAN.

How have they cast me, and to whom
A bondmaid?

HECUBA.

Peace, child:  wait thy doom. 
Our lots are near the trying.

FOURTH WOMAN.

Argos, belike, or Phthia shall it be,
Or some lone island of the tossing sea,
      Far, far from Troy?

HECUBA.

And I the aged, where go I,
  A winter-frozen bee, a slave
Death-shapen, as the stones that lie
  Hewn on a dead man’s grave: 
The children of mine enemy
To foster, or keep watch before
The threshold of a master’s door,
  I that was Queen in Troy!

A WOMAN TO ANOTHER.

[Strophe 2.

And thou, what tears can tell thy doom?

THE OTHER.

The shuttle still shall flit and change
Beneath my fingers, but the loom,
      Sister, be strange.

ANOTHER (wildly).

Look, my dead child!  My child, my love,
The last look....

ANOTHER.

Oh, there cometh worse. 
A Greek’s bed in the dark....

ANOTHER.

God curse
That night and all the powers thereof!

ANOTHER.

Or pitchers to and fro to bear
   To some Pirene[12] on the hill,
  Where the proud water craveth still
Its broken-hearted minister.

ANOTHER.

God guide me yet to Theseus’ land[13],
  The gentle land, the famed afar....

ANOTHER.

But not the hungry foam—­Ah, never!—­
Of fierce Eurotas, Helen’s river,
To bow to Menelaus’ hand,
  That wasted Troy with war!

A WOMAN.

[Antistrophe 2.

They told us of a land high-born,
  Where glimmers round Olympus’ roots
A lordly river, red with corn
  And burdened fruits.

ANOTHER.

Aye, that were next in my desire
  To Athens, where good spirits dwell....

ANOTHER.

Or Aetna’s breast, the deeps of fire
  That front the Tyrian’s Citadel: 
First mother, she, of Sicily
  And mighty mountains:  fame hath told
  Their crowns of goodness manifold....

ANOTHER.

And, close beyond the narrowing sea,
A sister land, where float enchanted
  Ionian summits, wave on wave,
And Crathis of the burning tresses
Makes red the happy vale, and blesses
With gold of fountains spirit-haunted
  Homes of true men and brave!