The Iliad of Homer

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 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)
Snatch'd in thy bloom from these desiring eyes!

Thou to the dismal realms for ever gone!
And I abandon'd, 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 shall go,
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 many, but his consort more.

Why gav'st thou not to me thy dying hand?
And why received not I thy last command?
Some word thou would'st have spoke, which, sadly dear,
My soul might keep, or utter with a tear;

Which never, never could be lost in air,
Fix'd 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,
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 inhuman doom,
Thy noble corse was dragg'd around the tomb;
(The tomb of him thy warlike arm had slain;)
Ungenerous insult, impotent and vain!

Yet glow'st thou fresh with every living grace;
No mark of pain, or violence of face:
Rosy and fair! as Phoebus' silver bow
Dismiss'd thee gently to the shades below."

Thus spoke the dame, and melted into tears.
Sad Helen next in pomp of grief appears;
Fast from the shining 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,
Now twice 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 mine!)
Yet was it ne'er my fate, from thee to find
A deed ungentle, 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 eyed me with disdain,
Or scornful sister with her sweeping train,
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 bemoan;
Sad Helen has no friend, now thou art gone!

Through Troy's wide streets abandon'd shall I roam!
In Troy deserted, as abhorr'd at home!"
So spoke the fair, with sorrow–streaming eye.
Distressful beauty melts each stander–by.

On all around the infectious sorrow grows;
But Priam check'd the torrent as it rose:
"Perform, ye Trojans! what the rites require,
And fell the forests for a funeral pyre;

Twelve days, nor foes nor secret ambush dread;
Achilles grants these honours to the dead."[299]