through the dome (the maids her steps pursue), And mounts the walls, and sends around her view. Too soon her eyes the killing object found, The godlike Hector dragg'd along the ground. A sudden darkness shades her swimming eyes: She faints, she falls; her breath, her colour flies. Her hair's fair ornaments, the braids that bound, The net that held them, and the wreath that crown'd, The veil and diadem flew far away (The gift of Venus on her bridal day). Around a train of weeping sisters stands, To raise her sinking with assistant hands. Scarce from the verge of death recall'd, again She faints, or but recovers to complain. [Illustration: ANDROMACHE FAINTING ON THE WALL.] ANDROMACHE FAINTING ON THE WALL. "O wretched husband of a wretched wife! Born with one fate, to one unhappy life! For sure one star its baneful beam display'd On Priam's roof, and Hippoplacia's shade. From different parents, different climes we came. At different periods, yet our fate the same! Why was my birth to great Aetion owed, And why was all that tender care bestow'd? Would I had never been!--O thou, the ghost Of my dead husband! miserably lost! Thou to the dismal realms for ever gone! And I abandon'd, desolate, alone! An only child, once comfort of my pains, Sad product now of hapless love, remains! No more to smile upon his sire; no friend To help him now! no father to defend! For should he 'scape the sword, the common doom, What wrongs attend him, and what griefs to come! Even from his own paternal roof expell'd, Some stranger ploughs his patrimonial field. The day, that to the shades the father sends, Robs the sad orphan of his father's friends: He, wretched outcast of mankind! appears For ever sad, for ever bathed in tears; Amongst the happy, unregarded, he Hangs on the robe, or trembles at the knee, While those his father's former bounty fed Nor reach the goblet, nor