Sunday, April 10, 2022
An Old Warrior
William Morris, The Roots of the Mountains, chapter XXV:
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As ye know and may see, I am now very old, and, as the word goes, unmeet for battle: yet might I get me to the field, either on mine own legs or on the legs of some four-foot beast, I would strike, if it were but one stroke, on these pests of the earth.Cf. Vergil, Aeneid 2.507-511 (he = Priam; tr. H. Rushton Fairclough):
When he saw the fall of the captured city, saw the doors of the house wrenched off, and the foe in the heart of his home, old as he is, he vainly throws his long-disused armour about his aged trembling shoulders, girds on his useless sword, and rushes to his death among his thronging foes.
urbis uti captae casum convulsaque vidit
limina tectorum et medium in penetralibus hostem,
arma diu senior desueta trementibus aevo
circumdat nequiquam umeris et inutile ferrum
cingitur, ac densos fertur moriturus in hostis.
