Stasimon 5
[Episode]
To Priam and the Elders of the Wall
880
HECTOR.
My charge, that, where the cart-road from the plain
Branches, they make due burial for our slain.
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,
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
MUSE.
Nay, look your fill, ye Trojans. It is I,
890
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,P. 50,1. 895 ff. and 1. 906 ff., A dirge of the Thracian mountains.]—Such dirges must have struck the Greeks as the fragments of Ossian struck the Lowlanders among us. I have found that the dirge here goes naturally into a sort of Ossianic rhythm.
895
I mourn for thee, O my son.
For a mother’s weeping, for a galley’s launching, for
A sad going, and watched by spirits of evil.
His mother chid him to stay, but he rose and went.
900
His father besought him to stay, but he went in anger.
Ah, woe is me for thee, thou dear face,
