Hector's

Hector's uncommonly brash and outspoken today. He's usually deathly quiet.

Mom! Hector's bugging me!

"And there / 'neath Hector's kin three hundred years complete / the kingdom shall endure, till Ilia fair, / queen-priestess, twins by Mars' embrace shall bear."

Then, then I see that Hector's words were right, / and all the Danaan wiles are naked to the light.

Behind the palace, unobserved and free, / there stood a door, a secret thoroughfare / through Priam's halls. Here poor Andromache / while Priam's kingdom flourished and was fair, / to greet her husband's parents would repair / alone, or carrying with tendance fain / to Hector's father Hector's son and heir.

"Times so dire / not such defenders nor such help require. / Not e'en, were Hector here, my Hector's aid / could save us."

"Not so Achilles, whom thy lying tongue / would feign thy father; like a foeman brave, / he scorned a suppliant's rights and trust to wrong, / and sent me home in safety, – ay, and gave / my Hector's lifeless body to the grave."

Within a grove Andromache that day, / where Simois in fancy flowed again, / her offerings chanced at Hector's grave to pay, / a turf-built cenotaph, with altars twain, / source of her tears and sacred to the slain – / and called his shade.

"Alas! what lot is thine? What worthy fate / hath caught thee, fallen from a spouse so high? / Hector's Andromache, art thou the mate / of Pyrrhus?"

Nor less Andromache, sore grieved to part, / rich raiment fetches, wrought with golden thread, / and Phrygian scarf, and still with bounteous heart / loads him with broideries. "Take these", she said, / "sole image of Astyanax now dead. / Thy kin's last gifts, my handiwork, to show / how Hector's widow loved the son she bred. / Such eyes had he, such very looks as thou, / such hands, and oh! like thine his age were ripening now!"