Lo! in good time I see his child and wife

Draw near to tend the hero’s obsequies.

Come hither, child, and take thy place beside him

And lay, in suppliant guise, thy hand in his,

And kneel as one who hath taken sanctuary,

With locks of hair as offering in thine hand⁠—

Mine, hers, and thine⁠—all-potent means of grace.

Then if by violence any of the host

Should drag thee from the dead man, be his lot

To perish banned, cast forth without a grave,

Cut off with kith and kindred, root and branch,

Even as I cut this lock from off my head.

Take it and keep it, child; let no man move thee.

Kneel thou, and clasp in close embrace the dead.

And ye, his comrades, stand not idly by

As women mourners; quit yourselves as men

In his defence, till I have made a grave

To bury him, though all the world forbid.

When shall the score be told, the sum of the endless years?

Weary am I of camps and tramps and the hurtling of spears.

Hither and thither I roam o’er the windswept Trojan plain,

Shame and reproach for Greece, for Grecians trouble and pain.

Would he had sunk to hell, or vanished in ether afar,

Who first admonished the Greeks to league themselves for the war⁠—

War, the father of toils, whence mortal sorrows began;

Yea, it was he who begat the plague and ruin of man.

Wretch! for me no garlands fine,

Cups o’erbrimming with red wine;