“O Trojan men and women, hasten forth To look on Hector, if ye e’er rejoiced To see him coming from the field alive, The pride of Troy, and all who dwell in her.”
She spake, and suddenly was neither man Nor woman left within the city bounds. Deep grief was on them all; they went to meet, Near to the gates, the monarch bringing home The dead. And first the wife whom Hector loved Rushed with his reverend mother to the car As it rolled on, and, plucking out their hair, Touched with their hands the forehead of the dead, While round it pressed the multitude, and wept, And would have wept before the gates all day, Even to the set of sun, in bitter grief For Hector’s loss, had not the aged man Addressed the people from his chariot-seat: “Give place to me, and let the mules pass on, And ye may weep your fill when once the dead Is laid within the palace.” As he spake, The throng gave way and let the chariot pass; And having brought it to the royal halls, On a fair couch they laid the corse, and placed Singers beside it, leaders of the dirge, Who sang a sorrowful, lamenting strain, And all the women answered it with sobs. White-armed Andromache in both her hands Took warlike Hector’s head, and over it Began the lamentation midst them all:—
“Thou hast died young, my husband, leaving me In this thy home a widow, and one son, An infant yet. To an unhappy pair He owes his birth, and never will, I fear, Bloom into youth; for ere that day will Troy Be overthrown, since thou, its chief defence, Art dead, the guardian of its walls and all Its noble matrons and its speechless babes, Yet to be carried captive far away, And I among them, in the hollow barques; And thou, my son, wilt either go with me, Where thou shalt toil at menial tasks for