Page:Homer - Iliad, translation Pope, 1909.djvu/138

The chief replied: "That post shall be my care,
Nor that alone, but all the works of war.
How would the sons of Troy, in arms renowned,
And Troy's proud dames, whose garments sweep the ground,
Attaint the lustre of my former name,
Should Hector basely quit the field of fame?
My early youth was bred to martial pains;
My soul impels me to the embattled plains;
Let me be foremost to defend the throne,
And guard my father's glories and my own.
Yet come it will, the day decreed by fates—
How my heart trembles while my tongue relates!—
The day when thou, imperial Troy! must bend,
And see thy warriors fall, thy glories end.
And yet no dire presage so wounds my mind,
My mother's death, the ruin of my kind,
Nor Priam's hoary hairs defiled with gore,
Nor all my brothers gasping on the shore,
As thine, Andromache! thy griefs I dread,
I see thee trembling, weeping, captive led:
In Argive looms our battles to design,
And woes, of which so large a part was thine;
To bear the victor's hard commands, or bring
The weight of water from Hyperia's spring;
Then, while you groan beneath the load of life,
They cry, Behold, the mighty Hector's wife!
Some haughty Greek, who lives thy tears to see,
Embitters all thy woes by naming me.
The thoughts of glory past and present shame,
A thousand griefs shall waken at the name!
May I lie low before that dreadful day,
Pressed with a load of monumental clay!
Thy Hector, wrapped in everlasting sleep,
Shall neither see thee sigh, nor hear thee weep!"
Thus, having spoke, the illustrious chief of Troy
Stretched his fond arms to clasp the lovely boy.
The babe clung crying to his nurse's breast,
Scared at the dazzling helm, and nodding crest.
With secret pleasure each fond parent smiled,
And Hector hasted to relieve his child;
The glittering terrors from his brow unbound,
And placed the beaming helmet on the ground;
Then kissed the child, and, lifting high in air,
Thus to the gods preferred a father's prayer:
"O thou! whose glory fills the ethereal throne,
And all ye deathless powers! protect my son:
Grant him, like me, to purchase just renown,
To guard the Trojans, to defend the crown,