Hecuba
Guide these aged steps, my servants, forth before the house;
[60]
guide and support your fellow-slave, once your queen, you maids of Troy. Grasp my aged hand, take me, support me, guide me, lift me up;
[65]
and I will lean upon your bent arm as on a staff and quicken my halting footsteps onwards.
O dazzling light of Zeus! O gloom of night! why am I thus scared by [70] fearful visions of the night? O lady Earth, mother of dreams that fly on sable wings! I am seeking to avert the vision of the night, the sight of horror which I learned from my dreams [75] about my son, who is safe in Thrace, and Polyxena, my dear daughter. You gods of this land! preserve my son, [80] the last and only anchor of my house, now settled in Thrace, the land of snow, safe in the keeping of his father's friend. Some fresh disaster is in store, a new strain of sorrow will be added to our woe. [85] Such ceaseless thrills of terror never wrung my heart before. Oh! where, you Trojan maidens, can I find inspired Helenus or Cassandra, that they may read me my dream? [90] For I saw a dappled deer mangled by a wolf's bloody fangs, torn from my knees by force, piteously. And this too filled me with fear; over the summit of his tomb appeared Achilles' phantom, and for his prize [95] he would have one of the luckless maids of Troy. Therefore, I implore you, divine powers, avert this horror from my daughter, from my child.