Around him all the woeful captive-maids, Whom he had taken for a prey, what time He had ravaged hallowed Lemnos, and had scaled The towered crags of Thebes, Eetion's town, Wailed, as they stood and rent their fair young flesh, And smote their breasts, and from their hearts bemoaned That lord of gentleness and courtesy, Who honoured even the daughters of his foes. And stricken most of all with heart-sick pain Briseis, hero Achilles' couchmate, bowed Over the dead, and tore her fair young flesh With ruthless fingers, shrieking: her soft breast Was ridged with gory weals, so cruelly She smote it thou hadst said that crimson blood Had dripped on milk. Yet, in her griefs despite, Her winsome loveliness shone out, and grace Hung like a veil about her, as she wailed: "Woe for this grief passing all griefs beside! Never on me came anguish like to this Not when my brethren died, my fatherland Was wasted--like this anguish for thy death! Thou wast my day, my sunlight, my sweet life, Mine hope of good, my strong defence from harm, Dearer than all my beauty--yea, more dear Than my lost parents! Thou wast all in all To me, thou only, captive though I be. Thou tookest from me every bondmaid's task And like a wife didst hold me. Ah, but now Me shall some new Achaean master bear To fertile Sparta, or to thirsty Argos. The bitter cup of thraldom shall I drain, Severed, ah me, from thee! Oh that the earth Had veiled my dead face ere I saw thy doom!" So for slain Peleus' son did she lament With woeful handmaids and heart-anguished Greeks, Mourning a king, a husband. Never dried Her tears were: ever to the earth they streamed Like sunless water trickling from a rock While rime and snow yet mantle o'er the earth Above it; yet the frost melts down before The east-wind and the flame-shafts of the sun. Now came the sound of that upringing wail To Nereus' Daughters, dwellers in the depths Unfathomed. With sore anguish all their hearts Were smitten: piteously they moaned: their cry Shivered along the waves of Hellespont. Then with dark mantles overpalled they sped Swiftly to where the Argive men were thronged. As rushed their troop up silver paths of sea, The flood disported round them as they came. With one wild cry they floated up; it rang, A sound as when fleet-flying cranes forebode A great storm. Moaned the monsters of the deep Plaintively round that train of mourners. Fast On sped they to their goal, with awesome cry Wailing the while their sister's mighty son. Swiftly from Helicon the Muses came Heart-burdened with undying grief, for love And honour to the Nereid starry-eyed.