Hermione Oh! why didst thou hunt me to snatch away my sword? Give, oh! give it back, dear nurse, that I may thrust it through my heart. Why dost thou prevent me hanging myself?
Nurse What! was I to let thy madness lead thee on to death?
Hermione Ah me, my destiny! Where can I find some friendly fire? To what rocky height can I climb above the sea or ’mid some wooded mountain glen, there to die and trouble but the dead?
Nurse
Why vex thyself thus? on all of us sooner or later heaven’s visitation comes.
Hermione
Thou hast left me, O my father, left me like a stranded bark, all alone, without an oar. My lord will surely slay me; no home is mine henceforth beneath my husband’s roof. What god is there to whose statue I can as a suppliant haste? or shall I throw myself in slavish wise at slavish knees? Would I could speed away from Phthia’s land on bird’s dark pinion, or like that pine-built ship, the first that ever sailed betwixt the rocks Cyanean!
Nurse
My child, I can as little praise thy previous sinful excesses, committed against the Trojan captive, as thy present exaggerated terror. Thy husband will never listen to a barbarian’s weak pleading and reject his marriage with thee for this. For thou wast no captive from Troy whom he wedded, but the daughter of a gallant sire, with a rich dower, from a city too of no mean prosperity. Nor will thy father forsake thee, as thou dreadest, and allow thee to be cast out from this house. Nay, enter now, nor show thyself before the palace, lest the sight of thee there bring reproach upon thee, my daughter.
Cite This Text