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[1058-1090] The Trojan Women 999
A chill on the dreams of women, though they be
Wilder of wing and loathed more than she!
{Exit, following HELEN, who is escorted by the Soldiers.)
CHORUS {singing)
Some Women
strophe 1
And hast thou turned from the Altar of frankincense,
And given to the Greek thy temple of Ilion?
The flame of the cakes of corn, is it gone from hence,
The myrrh on the air and the wreathed towers gone?
And Ida, dark Ida, where the wild ivy grows,
The glens that run as rivers from the summer-broken snows,
And the Rock, is it forgotten, where the first sunbeam glows,
The lit house most holy of the Dawn?
Others
antistrophe 1
The sacrifice is gone and the sound of joy,
The dancing under the stars and the night-long prayer:
The Golden Images and the Moons of Troy,
The twelve Moons and the mighty names they bear:
My heart, my heart crieth, O Lord Zeus on high,
Were they all to thee as nothing, thou throned in the sky,
Throned in the fire-cloud, where a City, near to die,
Passeth in the wind and the flare?
A Woman
Dear one, 0 husband mine,
Thou in the dim dominions
Driftest with waterless lips,
Unburied; and me the ships
Shall bear o'er the bitter brine,
Storm-birds upon angry pinions,
Where the towers of the Giants shine
O'er Argos cloudily,
And the riders ride by the sea.
Others
And children still in the Gate
Crowd and cry,
A multitude desolate,
Voices that float and wait
strophe 2