Part 75 (1/2)
At Scaea's gates they rovel round the slain
The wife and mother, frantic with despair, Kiss his pale cheek, and rend their scatter'd hair: Thus wildly wailing, at the gates they lay; And there had sigh'd and sorrow'd out the day; But Godlike Priam from the chariot rose: ”Forbear (he cried) this violence of woes; First to the palace let the car proceed, Then pour your boundless sorrows o'er the dead”
The waves of people at his word divide, Slow rolls the chariot through the following tide; Even to the palace the sad pomp they wait: They weep, and place him on the bed of state
A hs, and , alternate flow The obedient tears, roan from each full heart, And nature speaks at every pause of art
First to the corse the weeping consort flew; Around his neck her milk-white arms she threw, ”And oh, my Hector! Oh, my lord! (she cries) snatch'd in thy bloo eyes!
Thou to the disone!
And I abandon'd, desolate, alone!
An only son, once comfort of our pains, Sad product now of hapless love, ree that son shall rise, Or with increasing graces glad reat defender slain) Shall sink a s ruin on the plain
Who now protects her wives with guardian care?
Who saves her infants froe of war?
Now hostile fleets must waft those infants o'er (Those wives n shore: Thou too, o, The sad companion of thy mother's woe; Driven hence a slave before the victor's sword Condemn'd to toil for some inhuman lord: Or else some Greek whose father press'd the plain, Or son, or brother, by great Hector slain, In Hector's blood his vengeance shall enjoy, And hurl thee headlong from the towers of Troy(297) For thy stern father never spared a foe: Thence all these tears, and all this scene of woe!
Thence many evils his sad parents bore, His parents av'st thou not tohand?
And why received not I thy last command?
Some word thou would'st have spoke, which, sadly dear, My soul ht keep, or utter with a tear; Which never, never could be lost in air, Fix'd inroan for groan
The mournful mother next sustains her part: ”O thou, the best, the dearest to my heart!
Of all my race thou most by heaven approved, And by the immortals even in death beloved!
While all my other sons in barbarous bands Achilles bound, and sold to foreign lands, This felt no chains, but went a glorious ghost, Free, and a hero, to the Stygian coast
Sentenced, 'tis true, by his inhu'd around the toenerous insult, ilow'st thou fresh with every living grace; No mark of pain, or violence of face: Rosy and fair! as Phoebus' silver bow Disently to the shades below”
Thus spoke the darief appears; Fast fro sluices of her eyes Fall the round crystal drops, while thus she cries
”Ah, dearest friend! in whom the Gods had join'd(298) Tne mildest manners with the bravest mind, Noice ten years (unhappy years) are o'er Since Paris brought me to the Trojan shore, (O had I perish'd, ere that form divine Seduced this soft, this easy heart of entle, or a word unkind
When others cursed the authoress of their woe, Thy pity check'd my sorrows in their flow
If some proud brother eyedtrain, Thy gentle accents soften'd all my pain
For thee I mourn, and mourn myself in thee, The wretched source of all this misery
The fate I caused, for ever I beh Troy's wide streets abandon'd shall I roam!
In Troy deserted, as abhorr'd at ho eye
Distressful beauty melts each stander-by