‘Too brave! thy valor yet will cause thy death. Thou hast no pity on thy tender child, Nor me, unhappy one, who soon must be Thy widow. All the Greeks will rush on thee To take thy life. A happier lot were mine, If I must lose thee, to go down to earth, For I shall have no hope when thou art gone,— Nothing but sorrow. Father have I none, And no dear mother. Great Achilles slew My father, when he sacked the populous town Of the Cilicians,—Thebè with high gates. ‘Twas there he smote Eëtion, yet forbore To make his arms a spoil; he dared not that, But burned the dead with his bright armor on, And raised a mound above him. Mountain nymphs, Daughters of ægis-bearing[24] Jupiter, Came to the spot and planted it with elms. Seven brothers had I in my father’s house, And all went down to Hades in one day; Achilles the swift-footed slew them all Among their slow-paced bullocks and white sheep. My mother, princess on the woody slopes Of Placos, with his spoils he bore away, And only for large ransom gave her back. But her Diana, archer-queen, struck down Within her father’s palace. Hector, thou Art father and dear mother now to me, And brother and my youthful spouse besides. In pity keep within the fortress here, Nor make thy child an orphan nor thy wife A widow.’ Then answered Hector, great in war: ‘All this I bear in mind, dear wife; but I should stand Ashamed before the men and long-robed dames Of Troy, were I to keep aloof and shun The conflict, coward-like. Not thus my heart Prompts me, for greatly have I learned to dare And strike among the foremost sons of Troy, Upholding my great father’s fame and mine; Yet well in my undoubting mind I know The day shall come in which our sacred Troy, And Priam, and the people over whom Spear-bearing Priam rules, shall perish all. But not the sorrows of the Trojan race, Nor those of Hecuba[25] herself, nor those Of royal Priam, nor the woes that wait My brothers many and brave,—who all at last, Slain by the pitiless foe, shall lie in dust,— Grieve me so much as thine, when some mailed Greek Shall lead thee weeping hence, and take from thee Thy day of freedom. Thou in Argos then Shalt, at another’s bidding, ply the loom, And from the fountain of Messeis draw Water, or from the Hypereian spring, Constrained, unwilling try thy cruel lot. And then shall some one say who sees thee weep, “This was the wife of Hector, most renowned Of the horse-taming Trojans, when they fought Around their city.” So shall some one say, And thou shalt grieve the more, lamenting him Who haply might, have kept afar the day Of thy captivity. Oh! let the earth Be heaped above my head in death, before I hear thy cries as thou art borne away!’