The poem
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.'