onward, bending with the gifts they bore. Those in the tents the squires industrious spread: The foaming coursers to the stalls they led; To their new seats the female captives move Briseis, radiant as the queen of love, Slow as she pass'd, beheld with sad survey Where, gash'd with cruel wounds, Patroclus lay. Prone on the body fell the heavenly fair, Beat her sad breast, and tore her golden hair; All beautiful in grief, her humid eyes Shining with tears she lifts, and thus she cries: "Ah, youth for ever dear, for ever kind, Once tender friend of my distracted mind! I left thee fresh in life, in beauty gay; Now find thee cold, inanimated clay! What woes my wretched race of life attend! Sorrows on sorrows, never doom'd to end! The first loved consort of my virgin bed Before these eyes in fatal battle bled: My three brave brothers in one mournful day All trod the dark, irremeable way: Thy friendly hand uprear'd me from the plain, And dried my sorrows for a husband slain; Achilles' care you promised I should prove, The first, the dearest partner of his love; That rites divine should ratify the band, And make me empress in his native land. Accept these grateful tears! for thee they flow, For thee, that ever felt another's woe!" Her sister captives echoed groan for groan, Nor mourn'd Patroclus' fortunes, but their own. The leaders press'd the chief on every side; Unmoved he heard them, and with sighs denied. "If yet Achilles have a friend, whose care Is bent to please him, this request forbear; Till yonder sun descend, ah, let me pay To grief and anguish one abstemious day." He spoke, and from the warriors turn'd his face: Yet still the brother-kings of Atreus' race, Nestor, Idomeneus, Ulysses sage, And Phoenix, strive to calm his grief and rage: His rage they calm not, nor his grief control; He groans, he raves, he sorrows from his soul. "Thou too, Patroclus! (thus his heart he v