ay not upon my head the phantasies
Of Heaven. Remember all, and slay me not!

HECUBA.

Remember them she murdered, them that fought
Beside thee, and their children! Hear that prayer!

MENELAUS.

Peace, aged woman, peace! 'Tis not for her;
She is as naught to me.
(_To the Soldiers_) ... March on before,
Ye ministers, and tend her to the shore ...
And have some chambered galley set for her,
Where she may sail the seas.

HECUBA.

If thou be there,
I charge thee, let not her set foot therein!

MENELAUS.

How? Shall the ship go heavier for her sin?

HECUBA.

A lover once, will alway love again.

MENELAUS.

If that he loved be evil, he will fain
Hate it!... Howbeit, thy pleasure shall be done.
Some other ship shall bear her, not mine own....
Thou counsellest very well.... And when we come
To Argos, then ... O then some pitiless doom
Well-earned, black as her heart! One that shall bind
Once for all time the law on womankind
Of faithfulness!... 'Twill be no easy thing,
God knoweth. But the thought thereof shall fling
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[42].

_Some Women_.

[_Strophe_ I.

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?

EURIPIDES

_Others._

[_Antistrophe I._

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._

[_Strophe 2._

Dear one, O 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[43] shine
O'er Argos c