THOMAS MOORE.

PARTING OF HECTOR AND ANDROMACHE.

     FROM “THE ILIAD,” BOOK VI.

“Too daring prince! ah whither dost thou run? 
Ah too forgetful of thy wife and son! 
And think’st thou not how wretched we shall be,
A widow I, a helpless orphan he! 
For sure such courage length of life denies,
And thou must fall, thy virtue’s sacrifice. 
Greece in her single heroes strove in vain;
Now hosts oppose thee, and thou must be slain! 
Oh grant me, gods! ere Hector meets his doom,
All I can ask of heaven, an early tomb! 
So shall my days in one sad tenor run,
And end with sorrows as they first begun. 
No parent now remains, my griefs to share,
No father’s aid, no mother’s tender care. 
The fierce Achilles wrapt our walls in fire,
Laid Thebe waste, and slew my warlike sire! 
His fate compassion in the victor bred;
Stern as he was, he yet revered the dead,
His radiant arms preserved from hostile spoil,
And laid him decent on the funeral pile;
Then raised a mountain where his bones were burned;
The mountain nymphs the rural tomb adorned;
Jove’s sylvan daughters bade their elms bestow
A barren shade, and in his honor grow.

“Yet while my Hector still survives, I see
My father, mother, brethren, all, in thee. 
Alas! my parents, brothers, kindred, all,
Once more will perish if my Hector fall. 
Thy wife, thy infant, in thy danger share;
Oh prove a husband’s and a father’s care! 
That quarter most the skillful Greeks annoy,
Where yon wild fig-trees join the wall of Troy: 
Thou, from this tower defend th’important post;
There Agamemnon points his dreadful host,
That pass Tydides, Ajax, strive to gain,
And there the vengeful Spartan fires his train. 
Thrice our bold foes the fierce attack have given,
Or led by hopes, or dictated from heaven. 
Let others in the field their arms employ,
But stay my Hector here, and guard his Troy.”

The chief replied:  “That post shall be my care,
Nor that alone, but all the works of war.
[How would the sons of Troy, in arms renowned,
And Troy’s proud dames, whose garments sweep the ground,
Attaint the lustre of my former name,
Should Hector basely quit the field of fame? 
My early youth was bred to martial pains,
My soul impels me to th’embattled plains: 
Let me be foremost to defend the throne,
And guard my father’s glories, and my own. 
Yet come it will, the day decreed by fates;
(How my heart trembles while my tongue relates)
The day when thou, imperial Troy! must bend,
And see thy warriors fall, thy glories end. 
And yet no dire presage so wounds my mind,
My mother’s death, the ruin of my kind,
Not Priam’s hoary hairs denied with gore,
Not all my brothers gasping on the shore;
As thine, Andromache! thy griefs I dread;