Priam Rebuking His Sons

" Off, with a plague, you scandalous multitude,
Convicted knaves, have you not groans enough
At home, that thus you come oppressing me ?
Or am I mocked, because Saturnian Jove
Has smitten me, and taken my best boy ?
But ye shall feel, yourselves; for ye will be
Much easier for the Greeks to rage among
Now he is gone ; but I, before I see
That time, and Troy laid waste and trampled on,
Shall have gone down into the darksome house."

So saying, with his stick he drove them off,
And they went out, the old man urged them so.
And he called out in anger to his sons,
To Helenus, and Paris, god-like Agathon,
And Pammon, and Antiphonus, and Polites,
Loud in the tumult, and Deiphobus,
Hippothous, and the admirable Dius ; —
These nine he gave his orders to, in anger : —

" Be quicker, do, and help me, evil children,
Down-looking set ! Would ye had all been killed,
Instead of Hector, at the ships. Oh me !
Curs'd creature that I am ! I had brave sons,
Here in wide Troy, and now I cannot say
That one is left me, — Mestor, like a god.
And Troilus, my fine-hearted charioteer,
And Hector, who, for mortal, was a god,
For he seemed born, not of a mortal man,
But of a god ; yet Mars has swept them all ;
And none but these convicted knaves are left me,
Liars and dancers, excellent time-beaters,
Notorious pilferers of lambs and goats !
Why don't ye get the chariot ready, and set
The things upon it here, that we may go ? "
He said ; and the young men took his rebuke
With awe, and brought the rolling chariot forth.