town Of godlike Mynes, wouldst not suffer me To weep despairingly; for thou didst give Thy word to make me yet the wedded wife Of great Achilles, bear me in the fleet To Phthia, and prepare the wedding feast Among the Myrmidons. O ever kind! I mourn thy death, and cannot be consoled.”
Weeping she spake; the women wept with her Seemingly for the dead, but each, in truth, For her own griefs. Meanwhile the elders came Around Achilles, praying him to join The banquet, but the chief, with sighs, refused.
“Dear comrades, if ye love me, do not thus Press me to sit and feast. A mighty woe Weighs down my spirit; it is my resolve To wait and bear until the setting sun.”
So saying, he dismissed the other kings. The sons of Atreus, and the high-born chief Ulysses, Nestor, and Idomeneus, And Phoenix, aged knight, alone remained, And anxiously they sought to comfort him In his great grief; but comfort would he none Ere entering the red jaws of war. He drew Deep sighs, and, thinking on Patroclus, spake:
“The time has been when thou too, hapless one, Dearest of all my comrades, wouldst have spread With diligent speed before me in my tent A genial banquet, while the Greeks prepared For desperate battle with the knights of Troy. Thou liest now a mangled corse, and I, Through grief for thee, refrain from food and drink, Though they are near. No worse calamity Could light on me, not even should I hear News of my father’s death, who haply now Tenderly mourns with tears his absent son In Phthia, while upon a foreign coast I wage for hated Helen’s sake the war Against the Trojans; or were I to hear Tidings that my beloved son had died, The noble Neoptolemus, who now, If living, is in Scyros, growing up To manhood. Once the hope was in my heart That I alone should perish here at Troy, Far from the Argive pastures full of steeds,