E'en to the palace the sad pomp they wait:
They weep, and place him on the bed of state.
A melancholy choir attend around,
With plaintive sighs and music's solemn sound:
Alternately they sing, alternate flow
The obedient tears, melodious in their woe;
While deeper sorrows groan 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,
"Snatched in thy bloom from these desiring eyes!
Thou to the dismal realms for ever gone!
And I abandoned, desolate, alone!
An only son, once comfort of our pains,
Sad product now of hapless love, remains!
Never to manly age that son shall rise,
Or with increasing graces glad my eyes;
For Ilion now, her great defender slain,
Shall sink a smoking ruin on the plain.
Who now protects her wives with guardian care?
Who saves her infants from the rage of war?
Now hostile fleets must waft those infants o'er,
Those wives must wait them, to a foreign shore!
Thou too, my son! to barbarous climes shalt go,
The sad companion of thy mother's woe;
Driven hence a slave before the victor's sword,
Condemned to toil for some inhuman lord:
Or else some Greek, whose father pressed 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.
For thy stern father never spared a foe:[1]
Thence all these tears, and all this scene of woe!
Thence, many evils his sad parents bore,
His parents many, but his consort more.
Why gavest thou not to me thy dying hand?
And why received not I thy last command?
Some word thou wouldst have spoke, which, sadly dear,
My soul might keep, or utter with a tear;
Which never, never could be lost in air,
Fixed in my heart, and oft repeated there!"
Thus to her weeping maids she makes her moan:
Her weeping handmaids echo groan 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,
- ↑ The original runs, "For thy father was no gentle one in the dreadful strife of battle."
