Book 13
Shall farre more acceptable been what ever wyght he bee
399
Whom you prepare to pacifye by sacrifysing mee.
Yit (if that these last woordes of myne may purchace any grace),
I, daughter of king Priam erst, and now in prisoners cace,
Beeseeche you all unraunsomed to render to my moother
My bodye: and for buriall of the same to take none other
Reward than teares: for whyle shee could shee did redeeme with gold.
This sayd: the teares that shee forbare the people could not hold.
And even the verry preest himself full sore ageinst his will
And weeping, thrust her through the brest which she hild stoutly still.
Shee sinking softly to the ground with faynting legges, did beare
Even to the verry latter gasp a countnance voyd of feare.
And when shee fell, shee had a care such parts of her to hyde,
As womanhod and chastitie forbiddeth to be spyde.
The Trojane women tooke her up, and moorning reckened
King Priams children, and what blood that house alone had shed.
They syghde for fayer Polyxeene: they syghed eeke for thee
Who late wart Priams wyfe, whoo late wart counted for to bee
The flowre of Asia in his flowre, and Queene of moothers all:
But now the bootye of the fo as evill lot did fall,
And such a bootye as the sly Ulysses did not passe
Uppon her, saving that erewhyle shee Hectors moother was.
So hardly for his moother could a mayster Hector fynd.
Embracing in her aged armes the bodye of the mynd
That was so stout, shee powrd theron with sobbing syghes unsoft
The teares that for her husband and her children had so oft
And for her countrye sheaded beene. Shee weeped in her wound
And kist her pretye mouth, and made her brist with shrekes to sound,
According to her woonted guyse, and in the jellyed blood
Beerayed all her grisild heare, and in a sorrowfull mood
Sayd theis and many other woordes with brest bescratcht and rent:
O daughter myne, the last for whom thy moother may lament,
494
(For what remaynes?) O daughter, thou art dead and gone. I see
Thy wound which at the verry hart strikes mee as well as thee.
And lest that any one of myne unwounded should depart,
Thou also gotten hast a wound. Howbee't bycause thou wart
A woman, I beleeved thee from weapon to bee free.
But notwithstanding that thou art a woman, I doo see
Thee slayne by swoord. Even he that kild thy brothers killeth thee,
Achilles, the decay of Troy and maker bare of mee.
