Book 13
(King Priam's daughter, not a captive, pleads)
399
freely return my body to my mother,
let her not pay with gold for the sad right
to bury me—but only with her tears!
Yes, when she could, she also paid with gold.”
After she said these words, the people could
no more restrain their tears; but no one saw
her shed one tear. Even the priest himself,
reluctantly and weeping, drove the steel
into her proffered breast. On failing knees
she sank down to the earth; but still maintained
a countenance undaunted to the last:
and, even unto death, it was her care
to cover all that ought to be concealed,
and save the value of chaste modesty.
The Trojan matrons took her and recalled,
lamenting, all the sons of Priam dead,
the wealth of blood one house had shed for all.
And they bewailed the chaste Polyxena
and you, her mother, only lately called
a royal mother and a royal wife,—
the soul of Asia's fair prosperity,;
now lowest fallen in all the wreck of Troy.
The conquering Ulysses only claimed
her his because she had brought Hector forth:
and Hector hardly found a master for
his mother. She continued to embrace
the body of a soul so brave, and shed
her tears, as she had shed them often before
for country lost, for sons, for royal mate.
She bathed her daughter's wounds with tears and kissed
them with her lips and once more beat her breast.
Her white hair streamed down in the clotting blood,
she tore her breast, and this and more she said:
“My daughter, what further sorrow can be mine?
494
My daughter you lie dead, I see your wounds—
they are indeed my own. Lest I should lose
one child of mine without a cruel sword,
you have your wound. I thought, because
you were a woman, you were safe from swords.
