reath
At length and sense recovering, her complaint
Broken with sighs amid them thus began.
Hector! I am undone; we both were born
To misery, thou in Priam's house in Troy, 555
And I in Hypoplacian Thebes wood-crown'd
Beneath Eetion's roof. He, doom'd himself
To sorrow, me more sorrowfully doom'd,
Sustain'd in helpless infancy, whom oh
That he had ne'er begotten! thou descend'st 560
To Pluto's subterraneous dwelling drear,
Leaving myself destitute, and thy boy,
Fruit of our hapless loves, an infant yet,
Never to be hereafter thy delight,
Nor love of thine to share or kindness more. 565
For should he safe survive this cruel war,
With the Achaians penury and toil
Must be his lot, since strangers will remove
At will his landmarks, and possess his fields.
Thee lost, he loses all, of father, both, 570
And equal playmate in one day deprived,
To sad looks doom'd, and never-ceasing-tears.
He seeks, necessitous his father's friends,
One by his mantle pulls, one by his vest,
Whose utmost pity yields to his parch'd lips 575
A thirst-provoking drop, and grudges more;
Some happier child, as yet untaught to mourn
A parent's loss, shoves rudely from the board
My son, and, smiting him, reproachful cries--
Away--thy father is no guest of ours-- 580
Then, weeping, to his widow'd mother comes
Astyanax, who on his father's lap
Ate marrow only, once, and fat of lambs,[17]
And when sleep took him, and his crying fit
Had ceased, slept ever on the softest bed, 585
Warm in his nurse's arms, fed to his fill
With delicacies, and his heart at rest.
But now, Astyanax (so named in Troy
For thy sake, guardian of her gates and towers)
His father lost, must many a pang endure. 590
And as for thee, cast naked forth among
Yon galleys, where no parent's eye of thine
Shall find thee, when the dogs have torn thee once
Till they are sated, worms shall eat thee next.
Meantime, thy graceful raiment rich, prepared 595
By our own maidens, in thy palace lies;
But I will burn it, burn it all, because
Useless to thee, who never, so adorn'd,
Shalt slumber more; yet every eye in Troy
Shall see, how glorious once was thy attire.[18] 600
So, weeping, she; to whom t