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While strong affliction gives the feeble force:

Grief tears his heart, and drives him to and fro,

In all the raging impotence of woe. At length he roll'd in dust, and thus begun,

Imploring all, and naming one by one: 'Ah! let me, let me go where sorrow calls;

530

I, only I, will issue from your walls (Guide or companion, friends! I ask ye none),

And bow before the murd'rer of my son: My grief perhaps his pity may engage; Perhaps at least he may respect my age. He has a father too; a man like me; One not exempt from age and misery (Vig'rous no more, as when his young embrace

Begot this pest of me, and all my race). How many valiant sons, in early bloom, 540 Has that curs'd hand sent headlong to the

tomb!

Thee, Hector! last; thy loss (divinely brave)!

Sinks my sad soul with sorrow to the grave. Oh had thy gentle spirit pass'd in peace, The son expiring in the sire's embrace,

While both thy parents wept thy fatal hour,

And, bending o'er thee, mix'd the tender shower!

Some comfort that had been, some sad relief,

To melt in full satiety of grief!'

Thus wail'd the father, grov'ling on the ground,

550

And all the eyes of Ilion stream'd around. Amidst her matrons Hecuba appears (A mourning Princess, and a train in tears):

'Ah! why has Heav'n prolong'd this hated breath,

Patient of horrors, to behold thy death?
O Hector late thy parents' pride and joy,
The boast of nations the defence of Troy!
To whom her safety and her fame she
owed,

Her Chief, her hero, and almost her God!
O fatal change! become in one sad day 560
A senseless corse! inanimated clay !'

But not as yet the fatal news had spread To fair Andromache, of Hector dead; As yet no messenger had told his Fate, Nor ev'n his stay without the Scæan gate. Far in the close recesses of the dome Pensive she plied the melancholy loom; A growing work employ'd her secret hours, Confusedly gay with intermingled flowers. Her fair-hair'd handmaids heat the brazen

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She faints, she falls; her breath, her colour, flies.

Her hair's fair ornaments, the braids thst bound,

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The net that held them, and the wreath that crown'd,

The veil and diadem, flew far away (The gift of Venus on her bridal day). Around, a train of weeping sisters stands, To raise her sinking with assistant hands. Scarce from the verge of death recall'd, again

She faints, or but recovers to complain: 'O wretched husband of a wretched wife!

Born with one fate, to one unhappy life! For sure one star its baneful beam display'd

On Priam's roof, and Hippoplacia's shade. From diff'rent parents, diff'rent climes, w

came,

At diff'rent periods, yet our fate the same' Why was my birth to great Eetion owed. And why was all that tender care be stow'd?

Would I had never been!-Oh thou, the ghost

Of my dead husband! miserably lost! Thou to the dismal realms for ever gone! And I abandon'd, desolate, alone!

An only child, once comfort of my pains, 620 Sad product now of hapless love, remains! No more to smile upon his sire! no friend To help him now! no father to defend ! For should he 'scape the sword, the common doom,

What wrongs attend him, and what griefs to come!

Ev'n from his own paternal roof expell'd, Some stranger ploughs his patrimonial field.

The day that to the shades the father sends,

Robs the sad orphan of his father's friends: He, wretched outcast of mankind! appears 630

For ever sad, for ever bathed in tears;
Amongst the happy, unregarded he
Hangs on the robe or trembles at the knee;
While those his father's former bounty fed,
Nor reach the goblet, nor divide the bread:
The kindest but his present wants allay,
To leave him wretched the succeeding day.
Frugal compassion! Heedless, they who

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So spake the mournful dame: her matrons hear,

Sigh back her sighs, and answer tear with

tear.

BOOK XXIII

FUNERAL GAMES IN HONOUR OF PATROCLUS

THE ARGUMENT

Achilles and the Myrmidons do honours to the body of Patroclus. After the funeral feast he retires to the sea-shore, where, falling asleep, the ghost of his friend appears to him, and demands the rites of burial: the next morning the soldiers are sent with mules and wagons to fetch wood for the pyre. The funeral procession, and the offering their hair to the dead. Achilles sacrifices several animals, and lastly, twelve Trojan captives, at the pile; then sets fire to it. He pays libations to the winds, which (at the instance of Iris) rise, and raise the flame. When the pile has burned all night, they gather the bones, place them in an urn of gold, and raise the tomb. Achilles institutes the funeral games: the chariot-race, the fight of the cæstus, the wrestling, the foot-race, the single combat, the discus, the shooting with arrows, the darting the javelin : the various descriptions of which, and the various success of the several antagonists, make the greatest part of the book.

In this book ends the thirtieth day: the night following, the ghost of Patroclus appears to Achilles: the one-and-thirtieth day is employed in felling the timber for the pile; the two-and-thirtieth in burning it; and the three-and-thirtieth in the games. The

- scene is generally on the sea-shore.

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