_Women_ What wilt thou grant me, O God? Lo, this is the prayer of my travail-- Some well-being; and chance not very bitter thereby; Spirit uncrippled by pain; and a mind not deep to unravel Truth unseen, nor yet dark with the brand of a lie. With a veering mood to borrow Its light from every morrow, Fair friends and no deep sorrow, Well could man live and die! _Men_ Yet my spirit is no more clean, And the weft of my hope is torn, For the deed of wrong that mine eyes have seen, The lie and the rage and the scorn; A Star among men, yea, a Star That in Hellas was bright, By a Father's wrath driven far To the wilds and the night. Oh, alas for the sands of the shore! Alas for the brakes of the hill, Where the wolves shall fear thee no more, And thy cry to Dictynna is still! _Women_ No more in the yoke of thy car Shall the colts of Enetia fleet; Nor Limna's echoes quiver afar To the clatter of galloping feet. The sleepless music of old, That leaped in the lyre, Ceaseth now, and is cold, In the halls of thy sire. The bowers are discrowned and unladen Where Artemis lay on the lea; And the love-dream of many a maiden Lost, in the losing of thee. _A Maiden_ And I, even I, For thy fall, O Friend, Amid tears and tears, Endure to the end Of the empty years, Of a life run dry. In vain didst thou bear him, Thou Mother forlorn! Ye Gods that did snare him, Lo, I cast in your faces My hate and my scorn! Ye love-linkèd Graces, (Alas for the day!) Was he naught, then, to you, That ye cast him away, The stainless and true, From the old happy places? LEADER Look yonder! 'Tis the Prince's man, I ween Speeding toward this gate, most dark of mien. [A HENCHMAN _enters in haste_.] HENCHMAN Ye women, whither shall I go to seek King Theseus? Is he in this dwelling? Speak! LEADER Lo, where he cometh through the Castle gate! [THESEUS _comes out from the Castle_.] HENCHMAN O King, I bear thee tidings of dire weight To thee, aye, and to every man, I ween, From Athens to the marches of Trozên. THESEUS What? Some new stroke hath touched, unknown to me, The sister cities of my sovranty? HENCHMAN Hippolytus is...Nay, not dead; but stark Outstretched, a hairsbreadth this side of the dark. THESEUS (_as though unmoved_) How slain? Was there some other man, whose wife He had like mine denied, that sought his life? HENCHMAN His own wild team destroyed him, and the dire Curse of thy lips. The boon of thy great Sire Is granted thee, O King, and thy son slain.