A Man Young And Old: VI. His Memories

We should be hidden from their eyes,

Being but holy shows

And bodies broken like a thorn

Whereon the bleak north blows,

To think of buried Hector

And that none living knows.



The women take so little stock

In what I do or say

They'd sooner leave their cosseting

To hear a jackass bray;

My arms are like the twisted thorn

And yet there beauty lay;



The first of all the tribe lay there

And did such pleasure take -

She who had brought great Hector down

And put all Troy to wreck -

That she cried into this ear,

'Strike me if I shriek.'