Thou to the dismal realms forever gone!
And I abandoned, desolate, alone!
An only son, once comfort of our pains,
Sad product now of hapless love, remains!
Never to manly age that son shall rise,
Or with increasing graces glad my eyes;
For Ilion now (her great defender slain)
Shall sink a smoking ruin on the plain.

"Who now protects her wives with guardian care?
Who saves her infants from the rage of war?
Now hostile fleets must waft those infants o'er
(Those wives must wait them) to a foreign shore:
Thou too, my son, to barbarous climes shalt go,
The sad companion of thy mother's woe;
Or else some Greek whose father pressed the plain,
Or son, or brother, by great Hector slain,
In Hector's blood his vengeance shall enjoy,
And hurl thee headlong from the towers of Troy."
[Footnote: Such was the fate of Astyanax, Hector's
son, when Troy was taken:

"Here, from the tower by stem Ulysses thrown,
Andromache bewailed her infant son."
--MERRICK'S Tryphiodo'rus.]

The death of Hector was also lamented by Helen, and her
lamentation is thus spoken of by COLERIDGE: "I have always
thought the following speech, in which Helen laments Hector, and
hints at her own invidious and unprotected situation in Troy, as