Atrides over-heard, and said: “Lov’d son, No mortal must affect contentión With Jove, whose dwellings are of endless date. Perhaps of men some one may emulate, Or none, my house, or me; for I am one That many a grave extreme have undergone, Much error felt by sea, and till th’ eighth year, Had never stay, but wander’d far and near, Cyprus, Phœnicia, and Sidonia, And fetch’d the far-off Æthiopia, Reach’d the Erembi of Arabia, And Lybia, where with horns ewes yean their lambs, Which ev’ry full year ewes are three times dams, Where neither king, nor shepherd, want comes near Of cheese, or flesh, or sweet milk; all the year They ever milk their ewes. And here while I Err’d, gath’ring means to live, one, murd’rously, Unwares, unseen, bereft my brother’s life, Chiefly betray’d by his abhorréd wife. So hold I, not enjoying, what you see. And of your fathers, if they living be, You must have heard this, since my suff’rings were So great and famous; from this palace here (So rarely-well-built, furnishéd so well, And substancéd with such a precious deal Of well-got treasure) banish’d by the doom Of Fate, and erring as I had no home. And now I have, and use it, not to take Th’ entire delight it offers, but to make Continual wishes, that a triple part Of all it holds were wanting, so my heart Were eas’d of sorrows, taken for their deaths That fell at Troy, by their revivéd breaths. And thus sit I here weeping, mourning still Each least man lost; and sometimes make mine ill, In paying just tears for their loss, my joy. Sometimes I breathe my woes, for in annoy The pleasure soon admits satiety. But all these men’s wants wet not so mine eye, Though much they move me, as one sole man’s miss, For which my sleep and meat ev’n loathsome is In his renew’d thought, since no Greek hath won Grace for such labours as Laërtes’ son Hath wrought and suffer’d, to himself nought else But future sorrows forging, to me hells For his long absence, since I cannot know If life or death detain him; since such woe For his love, old Laërtes, his wise wife, And poor young son sustains, whom new with life He left as sireless.” This speech grief to tears (Pour’d from the son’s lids on the earth) his ears, Told of the father, did excite; who kept His cheeks dry with his red weed as he wept, His both hands us’d therein. Atrides then Began to know him, and did strife retain, If he should let himself confess his sire, Or with all fitting circumstance enquire.