No More Learning

Why was my birth to great Aetion owed,
And why was all that tender care bestow'd?
Would I had never been! --O thou, the ghost
Of my dead husband! miserably lost!
Thou to the dismal realms for ever gone!
And I abandon'd, desolate, alone!
An only child, once comfort of my pains,
Sad product now of hapless love, remains!
No more to smile upon his sire; no friend
To help him now! no father to defend!
For should he 'scape the sword, the common doom,
What wrongs attend him, and what griefs to come!
Even from his own paternal roof expell'd,
Some stranger ploughs his patrimonial field.
The day, that to the shades the father sends,
Robs the sad orphan of his father's friends:
He, wretched outcast of mankind! appears
For ever sad, for ever bathed in tears;
Amongst the happy, unregarded, he
Hangs on the robe, or trembles at the knee,
While those his father's former bounty fed
Nor reach the goblet, nor divide the bread:
The kindest but his present wants allay,
To leave him wretched the succeeding day.
Frugal compassion! Heedless, they who boast
Both parents still, nor feel what he has lost,
Shall cry, 'Begone!
thy father feasts not here:'
The wretch obeys, retiring with a tear.
Thus wretched, thus retiring all in tears,
To my sad soul Astyanax appears!
Forced by repeated insults to return,
And to his widow'd mother vainly mourn:
He, who, with tender delicacy bred,
With princes sported, and on dainties fed,
And when still evening gave him up to rest,
Sunk soft in down upon the nurse's breast,
Must--ah what must he not? Whom Ilion calls
Astyanax, from her well-guarded walls,(279)
Is now that name no more, unhappy boy!
Since now no more thy father guards his Troy.
But thou, my Hector, liest exposed in air,
Far from thy parents' and thy consort's care;
Whose hand in vain, directed by her love,
The martial scarf and robe of triumph wove.
Now to devouring flames be these a prey,
Useless to thee, from this accursed day!
Yet let the sacrifice at least be paid,
An honour to the living, not the dead! "

So spake the mournful dame: her matrons hear,
Sigh back her sighs, and answer tear with tear.





BOOK XXIII.


ARGUMENT.

FUNERAL GAMES IN HONOUR OF PATROCLUS. (280)

Achilles and the Myrmidons do honours to the body of Patroclus. After the
funeral feast he retires to the sea-shore, where, falling asleep, the
ghost of his friend appears to him, and demands the rites of burial; the
next morning the soldiers are sent with mules and waggons to fetch wood
for the pyre. The funeral procession, and the offering their hair to the
dead. Achilles sacrifices several animals, and lastly twelve Trojan
captives, at the pile; then sets fire to it.