All smote their bosoms, and all, fainting, fell."
When Hector falls, Hecuba tears her hair, and Priam piteously mourns and laments; and afterwards he says to Achilles, when he is begging of him a couch whereon to rest himself, that he has constantly sighed and groaned, full of endless sorrow, "rolling myself upon the earth in the court." So, in Firdusi, the hero Rustem tears his hair for his son Sohrab, roars for grief, and weeps blood; Sohrab's mother throws fire upon her head, rends her clothes, swoons continually, fills the hall with dust, weeps day and night, and dies in a year. The expression of the emotion is here in gigantic proportion, as the forms of the heroes themselves are colossal.
In the Nibelungenlied, the greatest tragedy of the Vendetta, the expression of passionate grief is no less colossal. Chrimhild raises her wail of sorrow over the dead Siegfrid,—blood gushes from her throat, she weeps blood above his corpse, and all the women help her with their lamentations.
In almost all the instances alluded to, we find the passion of sorrow pouring itself forth lyrically in the dirge. No loftier utterance of this kind is to be found than the lament of David for Saul and Jonathan. For the sake of the Corsican dirges, let us quote it here—
The beauty of Israel is slain upon thy high places:
How are the mighty fallen!
Tell it not in Gath,—publish it not in the streets of Askelon;
Lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice,
Lest the daughters of the uncircumcised triumph.
Ye mountains of Gilboa, let there be no dew,