_Urns and odours bring away;
Vapours, sighs, darken the day;
Our dole more deadly looks than dying;
Balms and gums and heavy cheers,
Sacred vials filled with tears,
And clamours through the wild air flying._
_Come, all sad and solemn shows
That are quick-eyed Pleasure’s foes;
We convent naught else but woes.
We convent naught else but woes._
Bring urns and sweet smells away; mists and sighs make the day dark; our grief looks more deadly than dying itself; bring healing ointments and perfumes and sad comfort, sacred jars filled with tears, and cries flying through the wild air. Come, all sad and solemn things that are enemies of bright pleasure; we gather nothing else but sorrows. We gather nothing else but sorrows.
Bring out the urns and the perfumes; sadness and sighs fill the air; our mourning looks worse than death itself; bring the healing oils and sad comforts, sacred bottles of tears, and the sound of weeping in the air. Come, all the sad, solemn things that make pleasure disappear; we've only got sorrow here. We've only got sorrow here.
bring urns & perfume sadness fills the air mourning looks worse than death we got nothing but sorrow nothing but sorrow
This funeral path brings to your household’s grave.
Joy seize on you again; peace sleep with him.
This funeral path brings you to your household's grave. May joy come to you again; may peace sleep with him.
This funeral rite takes you to your family's grave. I hope you get joy again someday; may peace go with him.
funeral path to ur familys grave may u find joy again peace to the dead
The Third Queen's couplet — 'This world's a city full of straying streets, / And death's the market-place where each one meets' — arrives at the end of the play's opening movement with the force of a door closing. It is, first, a beautiful image: the city as maze, death as the central plaza where all the wandering streets finally open out. But it is also a structural announcement. The entire play is about people taking wildly different paths — the cousins who were about to leave Thebes and instead went to war; the Jailer's Daughter who freed a prisoner she loved; Arcite who disguised himself to stay near the woman who would be his death. Every one of those straying streets leads to the same marketplace. The couplet is spoken by the most minor character in the scene — a queen we have barely heard from — but it is the play's thesis. Watch for how many times the play returns to this image of converging paths.
And this to yours.
And the same to you.
Same to you.
same to u
Yours this way. Heavens lend
A thousand differing ways to one sure end.
You go this way. May heaven give a thousand different ways that all lead to one certain end.
You all go this way. I hope heaven lets everyone take their own path, but we all end up in the same place.
each of u go ur own way but all paths lead to the same end
This world’s a city full of straying streets,
And death’s the market-place where each one meets.
The world is a city full of twisting streets, and death is the marketplace where everyone meets.
The world's like a city with streets going everywhere, and death is the one marketplace where we all end up meeting.
worlds a city w winding streets death is where everyone meets
The Reckoning
The briefest scene in the act, and one of the most formally perfect: a funeral procession, a song of mourning, three queens who spent the entire first scene united in grief now separating forever to their individual losses. The Third Queen's final couplet about the city of straying streets and death's marketplace is the play's first statement of its deep theme — that all the play's different paths (love, honour, friendship, war) lead to the same destination.
If this happened today…
Three women who met at a support group for war widows have accomplished what they came to do — the bodies of their husbands have finally been found and repatriated. At the airport they hug and exchange numbers but know they probably won't call. One says: 'We came from different places. We end up in the same place.' They go through separate doors.