Page 2843 - Shakespeare - Vol. 2

What mean these fellows? Know they not Achilles? [70]

PATROCLUS
They pass by strangely. They were used to bend,
To send their smiles before them to Achilles;
To come as humbly as they use to creep
To holy altars.

ACHILLES
What, am I poor of late?
’Tis certain, greatness, once fallen out with fortune, [75]
Must fall out with men too. What the declined is,
He shall as soon read in the eyes of others

As feel in his own fall; for men, like butterflies,
Show not their mealy wings but to the summer,
And not a man, for being simply man, [80]
Hath any honour, but honoured for those honours

That are without him, as place, riches, and favour −
Prizes of accident as oft as merit −
Which when they fall, as being slippery standers,
The love that leaned on them, as slippery too, [85]

Doth one pluck down another, and together
Die in the fall. But ’tis not so with me:
Fortune and I are friends. I do enjoy
At ample point all that I did possess,

Save these men’s looks; who do, methinks, find out [90]
Something not worth in me such rich beholding
As they have often given. Here is Ulysses:
I’ll interrupt his reading −

How now, Ulysses!

ACHILLES
Now, great Thetis’ son.
What are you reading?

ULYSSES
A strange fellow here [95]
Writes me that man − how dearly ever parted,