Page:Homer - Iliad, translation Pope, 1909.djvu/393

721—20 What sorrows then must their sad mother know,

What anguish I! unutterable woe!

Yet less that anguish, less to her, to me,

Less to all Troy, if not deprived of thee.

Yet shun Achilles! enter yet the wall;

And spare thyself, thy father, spare us all!

Save thy dear life: or if a soul so brave

Neglect that thought, thy dearer glory save.

Pity, while yet I live, these silver hairs,

While yet thy father feels the woes he bears,

Yet cursed with sense! a wretch, whom in his rage,

All trembling on the verge of helpless age,

Great Jove has placed, sad spectacle of pain!

The bitter dregs of fortune's cup to drain:

To fill with scenes of death his closing eyes,

And number all his days by miseries!

My heroes slain, my bridal bed o'erturned,

My daughters ravished, and my city burned,

My bleeding infants dashed against the floor;

These I have yet to see, perhaps yet more!

Perhaps e'en I, reserved by angry fate

The last sad relic of my ruined state,

Dire pomp of sovereign wretchedness, must fall

And stain the pavement of my regal hall;

Where famished dogs, late guardians of my door,

Shall lick their mangled master's spattered gore.

Yet for my sons I thank you, gods! 'twas well: Well have they perished, for in fight they fell.

Who dies in youth and vigour, dies the best, Struck through with wounds, all honest on the breast. But when the Fates, in fulness of their rage, Spurn the hoar head of unresisting age, In dust the reverend lineaments deform, And pour to dogs the life-blood scarcely warm;

This, this is misery! the last, the worst, That man can feel: man, fated to be cursed! He said, and acting what no words could say,

Rent from his head the silver locks away. With him the mournful mother bears a part: Yet all their sorrows turn not Hector's heart: The zone unbraced, her bosom she displayed; And thus, fast-falling the salt tears, she said:

"Have mercy on me, O my son! revere The words of age ; attend a parent's prayer! If ever thee in these fond arms I pressed, Or stilled thy infant clamours at this breast; Ah I do not thus our helpless years forgo, But, by our walls secured, repel the foe.

Against his rage if singly thou proceed,