The Iliad of Homer


google search for The Iliad of Homer

Return to Master Book Index.

Page
794 795 796 797 798

Quick Jump
1 245 490 735 980

For sure one star its baneful beam display'd  
On Priam's roof, and Hippoplacia's shade.  
From different parents, different climes we came.  
At different periods, yet our fate the same!  
Why was my birth to great Aetion owed,  
And why was all that tender care bestow'd?  
Would I had never been!--O thou, the ghost  
Of my dead husband! miserably lost!  
Thou to the dismal realms for ever gone!  
And I abandon'd, desolate, alone!  
An only child, once comfort of my pains,  
Sad product now of hapless love, remains!  
No more to smile upon his sire; no friend  
To help him now! no father to defend!  
For should he 'scape the sword, the common doom,  
What wrongs attend him, and what griefs to come!  
Even from his own paternal roof expell'd,  
Some stranger ploughs his patrimonial field.  
The day, that to the shades the father sends,  
Robs the sad orphan of his father's friends:  
He, wretched outcast of mankind! appears  
For ever sad, for ever bathed in tears;  
Amongst the happy, unregarded, he  
Hangs on the robe, or trembles at the knee,  
While those his father's former bounty fed  
Nor reach the goblet, nor divide the bread:  
796  


Page
794 795 796 797 798

Quick Jump
1 245 490 735 980