To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow⁠—

What pleasure comes of that? ’Tis but a move

Forward or backward and the end⁠—is death!

I would not count that mortal worth a doigt

Who lives on, fed by visionary hopes.

Nobly to live⁠—that is the true knight’s choice,

Or nobly end his life. I have said my say.

No man will charge thee, Ajax, with feigned words.

’Twas thy heart spoke; yet pause and put aside

These dark thoughts; let thyself be ruled by friends.

Ah, my lord Ajax, heavier lot is none

Than to lie helpless in the coils of fate.

I was the daughter of a high-born sire

Of Phrygians unsurpassed in wealth and might.

And now, I am a slave; ’twas so ordained

By Heaven, methinks, and by thy might of arm.

Since fate has willed, then, I should share thy bed,

Thy good is mine; and O by the god of the hearth,

O by the wedded bond that made us one,

Let me not fall into a stranger’s hand,

A laughing-stock! For, surely, if thou die

And leave me widowed, on that very day

I shall be seized and haled away by force,

I and thy son, prey to the Argive host,

Our portion slavery. Then shall I hear

The flouts and gibes that my new lords let fly.

“Look on her,” one will say, “the leman once

Of Ajax, mightiest of the Argive chiefs,

How has she fallen from her place of pride!”