Page:Homer - Iliad, translation Pope, 1909.djvu/403

558—606 To whom her safety and her fame she owed,

Her chief, her hero, and almost her god!

O fatal change! become in one sad day

A senseless corse! inanimated clay!"

But not as yet the fatal news had spread

To fair Andromache, of Hector dead;

As yet no messenger had told his fate,

Nor e'en his stay without the Scsean gate.

Far in the close recesses of the dome

Pensive she plied the melancholy loom;

A growing work employed her secret hours,

Confusedly gay with intermingled flowers.

Her fair-haired handmaids heat the brazen urn,

The bath preparing for her lord's return:

In vain: alas! her lord returns no more!

Unbathed he lies, and bleeds along the shore!

Now from the walls the clamours reach her ear

And all her members shake with sudden fear;

Forth from her ivory hand the shuttle falls,

As thus, astonished, to her maids she calls:

"Ah, follow me!" she cried, "what plaintive noise

Invades my ear? 'Tis sure my mother's voice.

My faltering knees their trembling frame desert,

A pulse unusual flutters at my heart.

Some strange disaster, some reverse of fate—

Ye gods avert it!—threats the Trojan state.

Far be the omen which my thoughts suggest!

But much I fear my Hector's dauntless breast

Confronts Achilles; chased along the plain,

Shut from our walls! I fear, I fear him slain!

Safe in the crowd he ever scorned to wait,

And sought for glory in the jaws of fate:

Perhaps that noble heat has cost his breath,

Now quenched for ever in the arms of death."

She spoke; and, furious, with distracted pace,

Fears in her heart, and anguish in her face,

Flies through the dome, the maids her step pursue,

And mounts the walls, and sends around her view.

Too soon her eyes the killing object found,

The godlike Hector dragged along the ground.

A sudden darkness shades her swimming eyes:

She faints, she falls; her breath, her colour, flies.

Her hair's fair ornaments, the braids that bound,

The net that held them, and the wreath that crowned,

The veil and diadem, flew far away;

The gift of Venus on her bridal day.

Around, a train of weeping sisters stands,

To raise her sinking with assistant hands.

Scarce from the verge of death recalled, again