ps (humiliation yet
Unseen on earth) his hand who slew my son!"
So saying, he waken'd in his soul regret
Of his own sire; softly he placed his hand
On Priam's hand, and pushed him gently away,
Remembrance melted both. Rolling before
Achilles' feet, Priam his son deplored,
Wide-slaughtering Hector, and Achilles wept
By turns his father, and by turns his friend
Patroclus: sounds of sorrow fill'd the tent.

_Cowper_, _Iliad_, xxiv.

HELEN'S LAMENTATION OVER HECTOR.

(_By Homer._)

Grief fell on all around;
Then Helen thus breathed forth her plaintive sound:--
"Hector, to Helen's soul more lov'd than all
Whom I in Ilion's walls dare brother call,
Since Paris here to Troy his consort led,
Who in the grave had found a happier bed.
'Tis now, since here I came, the twentieth year,
Since left my land, and all I once held dear:
But never from that hour has Helen heard
From thee a harsh reproach or painful word;
But if thy kindred blam'd me, if unkind
The queen e'er glanc'd at Helen's fickle mind--
(For Priam, still benevolently mild,
Look'd on me as a father views his child)--
Thy gentle speech, thy gentleness of soul,
Would by thine own, their harsher minds control.
Hence, with a heart by torturing misery rent,
Thee and my hapless self I thus lament;
For no kind eye in Troy on Helen rests,
But who beholds me shudders and detests."

_Sotheby_, _Iliad_, xxi.

We will here give a few pages of the history of the Trojan war, giving
some of the characters, subjects, etc., referred to in the preceding
poems in a prose story.

PARIS.

There was sorrow, instead of gladness, in the halls of Priam, because
a son was born unto him, and because the lady Hecuba had dreamed a
dream, from which the seers knew that the child should bring ruin on
the Ilion land. So his mother looked with cold, unloving eyes on the
babe as he lay weak and helpless in his cradle, and Priam bade them
take the child and leave him on rugged Ida, for the fountain of his
love was closed against him.

For five days the dew fell on the babe by night, and the sun shone
fiercely on him by day, as he lay on the desolate hill-side, and the
shepherd who placed him there to sleep the sleep of death looked upon
the child and said, "He sleeps as babes ma