Call me but mother in the shades of death!
She now is twelve years old, when the bud swells,
And the first colors of uncertain life
Begin to tinge it."

Menelaus turns aside to say,

"Can she think of home?
Hers once, mine yet, and sweet Hermione's!
Is there one spark that cheered my hearth, one left
For thee, my last of love?"

When she beseeches him to delay not her merited fate, her words
greatly move him, and he exclaims (aside),

"Her voice is musical
As the young maids who sing to Artemis:
How glossy is that yellow braid my grasp
Seized and let loose! Ah, can ten years have passed
Since--but the children of the gods, like them,
Suffer not age.[Footnote: Jupiter was fabled to be
the father of Helen.]
(Then turning to Helen.) Helen! speak honestly,
And thus escape my vengeance--was it force
That bore thee off?"

Her words and grief move him to pity, if not to love, and he
again turns aside to say,

"The true alone and loving sob like her.