There, lift him.—Bear him to my house. Take pains,
If care can do it, that the man complains
No more of Troy.—Ye others, bear withal
To Priam and the Elders of the Wall
My charge, that, where the cart-road from the plain
Branches, they make due burial for our slain.
[One party of Guards lifts carefully the wounded Thracian and goes off bearing him: another departs with the message to Troy.
Chorus.
Back from the heights of happiness,
Back, back, to labour and distress
Some god that is not ours doth lead
Troy and her sons; He sows the seed,
Who knows the reaping?
[In the air at the back there appears a Vision of the Muse holding the body of her dead son Rhesus.
Ah! Ah!
My king, what cometh? There appears
Some Spirit, like a mist of tears;
And in her arms a man lieth,
So young, so wearied unto death;
To see such vision presageth
Wrath and great weeping.
[The Guards hide their heads in their mantles.
Muse.
Nay, look your fill, ye Trojans. It is I,
The many-sistered Muse, of worship high
In wise men's hearts, who come to mourn mine own
Most pitifully loved, most injured, son,
For whose shed blood Odysseus yet shall pay
Vengeance, who crawled and stabbed him where he lay.
With a dirge of the Thracian mountains,
I mourn for thee, O my son.
For a mother's weeping, for a galley's launching, for
the way to Troy;
A sad going, and watched by spirits of evil.
His mother chid him to stay, but he rose and went.
His father besought him to stay, but he went in
anger.
Ah, woe is me for thee, thou dear face,
My belovèd and my son!