University of Virginia Library

VIII. HECTOR.

Of all that by their deaths at Ilium came,
There's none the chord of sympathy in me

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With more insistence strikes than Hector, he
Who to the boor Achilles life and fame
Not only lost, but, by Fate's spite, whose name,
Miswritten on the page of history,
(Though modest he as brave,) is grown to be
A byword for a braggart and a shame.
What bard hath e'er bethought himself of thee,
To justify thy memory in his lays?
One only, mightiest of the sons of men,
Hath set thee somedele in thy place of praise,
In that his song of Trojan times, where he
Of Troïlus and Cressid told erewhen.