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HECUBA: POLYXENA, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: I see you, odysseus, with your hand in hiding
Last Line: To live so poor a life would be mere sorrow.


I see you, Odysseus, with your hand in hiding
Beneath your cloak, and face averted, fearing
My supplication upon your cheek; fear not.
You have escaped the god who pleads for me:
For now I'll follow you, as follow I must,
And I long for death; because if I hold back,
A coward of a woman I shall appear,
My own life loving; and why live? My father
Was king of all the Phrygians; this my life
Was well begun, and, nursed in happy hopes,
I was a bride for kings, and no poor match
For him whose palace and hearth I was to come to.
Princess -- unlucky too -- have I been in Ida,
Where women and girls alike to me would look, --
Equalled with gods in everything but dying;
But now I'm slave, a word that most of all
Enamours me of death, being strange to me;
For well may I find a master hard of heart,
Whoever with his wealth be purchaser
Of me, sister of Hector and his brothers.
Corn in his house he well may force me to grind,
Or sweep the floor, or at the shuttle stand,
Leading a bitter life of enforced days.
Me in the marriage bed some slave will taint,
Bought heaven knows where, though I was fit for princes.
Not now! this day, bright only for free eyes,
I now renounce and give my body to death.
Take me, Odysseus, take me and kill me now,
Because with us I see no hope or comfort,
No inkling of the honourable state
That I should find. Then, mother, thwart me not
In word or deed, but rather counsel dying
Before indignities are mine to endure.
When trouble smacks unwonted, one can bear it,
But yet the neck is winced into the yoke;
And dying would be greater joy than living;
To live so poor a life would be mere sorrow.





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