Now from his cycle sleepless and vast round the dance of the Earth-globe

Gold Hyperions rose in the wake of the dawn like the eyeball

Flaming of God revealed by his uplifted luminous eyelid.

Troy he beheld and he viewed the transient labour of mortals.

All her marble beauty and pomp were laid bare to the heavens.

Sunlight streamed into Ilion waking the voice of her gardens,

Amorous seized on her ways, lived glad in her plains and her pastures,

Kissed her leaves into brightness of green. As a lover the last, time

Yearns to the beauty desired that again shall not wake to his kisses,

So over Ilion doomed leaned the yearning immense of the sunrise.

She like a wordless marble memory dreaming for ever

Lifted the gaze of her perishable immortality sunwards.

All her human past aspired in the clearness eternal,

Temples of Phryx and Dardanus touched with the gold of the morning,

Columns triumphant of Ilus, domes of their greatness enamoured,

Stones that intended to live; and her citadel climbed up to heaven

White like the soul of the Titan Laomedon claiming his kingdoms,

Watched with alarm by the gods as he came. Her bosom maternal

Thrilled to the steps of her sons and a murmur began in her high-roads

Life renewed its ways which death and sleep cannot alter,

Life that pursuing her boundless march to a goal which we know not,

Ever her own law obeys, not our hopes, who are slaves of her heart-beats.

Then as now men walked in the round which the gods have decreed them

Eagerly turning their eyes to the lure and the tool and the labour.

Chained is their gaze to the span in front, to the gulfs they are blinded

Meant for their steps. The seller opened his shop and the craftsman

Bent o'er his instruments handling the work he never would finish,

Busy as if their lives were for ever, today in its evening

Sure of tomorrow. The hammers clanged and the voice of the markets

Waking desired its daily rumour. Nor only the craftsman,

Only the hopes of the earth, but the hearts of her votaries kneeling

Came to her marble shrines and upraised to our helpers eternal

Missioned the prayer and the hymn or silent, subtly adoring

Ventured upwards in incense. Loud too the clash of the cymbals

Filled all the temples of Troy with the cry of our souls to the azure.

Prayers breathed in vain and a cry that fell back with Fate for its answer

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Children laughed in her doorways; joyous they played, by their mothers

Smiled on still, but their tender bosoms unknowing awaited

Grecian spearpoints sharpened by Fate for their unripe bosoms,

Tasks of the slave in Greece. Like bees round their honey-filled dwellings

Murmuring swarmed to the well-heads the large-eyed daughters of Troya,

Deep-bosomed, limbed like the gods, - glad faces of old that were sentient

Rapturous flowers of the soul, bright bodies that lived under darkness

Heavily¹ massed of their locks like day under night made resplendent,

Daughters divine of the earth in the ages when heaven was our father.

They round Troy's well-heads flowerlike satisfied mom with their beauty

Or in the river baring their knees to the embrace of the coolness

Dipped their white feet in the clutch of his streams, in the haste of Scamander,

Lingering this last time with laughter and talk of the day and the morrow

Leaned to the hurrying flood. All his swiftnesses raced down to meet them

Crowding his channel with dancing billows and turbulent murmurs.

Xanthus primaeval met these waves of our life in its passing

Even as of old he had played with Troy's ancient fair generations

Mingling his deathless voice with the laughter and joy of their ages,

Laughter of dawns that are dead and a joy that the earth has rejected.

Still his whispering trees remembered their bygone voices.

Hast thou forgotten, O river of Troy? Still, still we can hear them

Now, if we listen long in our souls, the bygone voices.

Earth in her fibres remembers, the breezes are stored with our echoes.

Over the stone-hewn steps for their limpid orient waters

Joyous they leaned and they knew not yet of the wells of Mycenae,

Drew not yet from Eurotas the jar for an alien master,

Mixed not Pineus yet with their tears. From the clasp of the current

Now in their groups they arose and dispersed through the streets and the

byways,

Turned from the freedom of earth to the works and the joy of the hearthside,

Lightly, they rose and returned through the lanes of the wind-haunted city

Swaying with rhythmical steps while the anklets jangled and murmured.

Silent temples saw them passing; you too, O houses,

Built with such hopes by mortal man for his transient lodging;

Fragrant the gardens strewed on dark tresses their white-smiling jasmines

Dropped like a silent boon of purity soft from the branches:

Flowers by the wayside were budding, cries flew winged round the tree-tops.

Bright was the glory of life in Ilion city of Priam.

Thrice to the city the doom-blast published its solemn alarum,

¹Nobly

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Blast of the trumpets that call to assembly clamoured through Troya

Thrice and were still. From garden and highway, from palace and temple

Turned like a steed to the trumpet, rejoicing in war and ambition,

Gathered alert to the call the democracy hated of heaven.

First in their ranks upbearing their age as Atlas his heavens,

Eagle-crested, with hoary hair like the snow upon Ida,

Ilion's senators paced, Antenor and wide-browed Anchises.

Athamas famous for ships and the war of the waters, Tryas

Still whose name was remembered by Oxus the orient river,

Astyoches and Ucalegon, dateless Pallachus, Aetor,

Aspetus who of the secrets divine knew all and was silent,

Ascanus, Iliones, Alcesiphron, Orus, Aretes.

Next from the citadel came with the voice of the heralds before him

Priam and Priam's sons, Aeneas leonine striding,

Followed¹ by the heart of a nation adoring her Penthesilea.

All that was noble in Troy attended the regal procession

Marching in front and behind and the tramp of their feet was a rhythm

Tuned to the arrogant fortunes of Ilion ruled by incarnate

Demigods, Ilus and Phryx and Dardanus, Tros of the conquests,

Tros and far-ruling Laomedon who to his grandiose²labour

Drew down the sons of the skies and was served by the ageless immortals.

Into the agora vast and aspirant besieged by its columns

Bathed and anointed they came like gods in their beauty and grandeur.

Last like the roar of the winds came trampling the surge of the people.

Clamorous led by a force obscure to its ultimate fatal

Session of wrath the violent mighty democracy hastened;

Thousands of ardent lives with the heart yet unslain in their bosoms

Lifted to heaven the voice of man and his far-spreading rumour.

Singing the young men with banners marched in their joyous processions,

Trod in martial measure or dancing with lyrical paces

Chanted the glory of  Troy and the wonderful deeds of their fathers.

Into the columned assembly where Ilus had gathered his people,

Thousands on thousands the tramp and the murmur poured; in their armoured

Glittering tribes they were ranked, an untameable high-hearted nation

Waiting the voice of its chiefs. Some gazed on the greatness of Priam

Ancient, remote from their days, the last of the gods who were passing,

Left like a soul uncompanioned in worlds where his strength shall not conquer:

¹Led ²soul’s strong

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Sole like a column gigantic alone on a desolate hill-side

Older than mortals he seemed and mightier. Many in anger

Aimed their hostile looks where calm though by heaven abandoned,

Left to his soul and his lucid mind and its thoughts unavailing,

Head of¹ the age-chilled few whom the might of their hearts had not blinded,

Famous Antenor was seated, the fallen unpopular statesman,

Wisest of speakers in Troy but rejected, stoned and dishonoured.

Silent, aloof from the people he sat, a heart full of ruins.

Low was the rumour that swelled like the hum of the bees in a meadow

When with the thirst of the honey they swarm on the thyme and the linden,

Hundreds humming and flitting till all that place is a murmur.

Then from his seat like a tower arising Priam the monarch

Slowly erect in his vast tranquillity silenced the people:

Lonely, august he stood like one whom death has forgotten,

Reared like a column of might and of silence over the assembly.

So Olympus rises alone with his snows into heaven.

Crowned were his heights by the locks that slept like the mass of the snow-swathe

Clothing his giant shoulders; his eyes of deep meditation,

Eyes that beheld now the end and accepted it like the beginning

Gazed on the throng of the people as on a pomp that is painted:

Slowly he spoke like one who is far from the scenes where he sojourns.

“Leader of Ilion, hero Deiphobus, thou who hast summoned

Troy in her people, arise; say wherefore thou callest us. Evil

Speak thou or good, thou canst speak that only: Necessity fashions

All that the unseen eye has beheld. Speak then to the Trojans;

Say on this dawn of her making what issue of death or of triumph

Fate in his suddenness puts to the unseeing, what summons to perish

Send² to this nation men who revolt and gods who are hostile.”

Rising Deiphobus spoke, in stature less than his father,

Less in his build, yet the mightiest man and tallest whom coursers

Bore or his feet to the fight since Ajax fell by the Xanthus.

“People of Ilion, long have you fought with the gods and the Argives

Slaying and slain, but the years persist and the struggle is endless.

Fainting your helpers cease from the battle, the nations forsake you.

Asia weary of strenuous greatness, ease-enamoured

Suffers the foot of the Greek to tread on the beaches of Troas.

Yet have we striven for Troy and for Asia, men who desert us.

Not for ourselves alone have we fought, for our life of a moment!

¹Leading ²Cry

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Once if the Greeks were triumphant, once if their nations were marshalled

Under some far-seeing chief, Odysseus, Peleus, Achilles,

Not on the banks of Scamander and skirts of the azure Aegean

Fainting would cease the audacious emprise, the Titanic endeavour;

Tigris would flee from their tread and Indus be drunk by their coursers.

Now in these days when each sun goes marvelling down that Troy stands yet

Suffering, smiting, alive, though doomed to all eyes that behold her,

Flinging back Death from her walls and bronze to the shock and the clamour,

Driven by a thought that has risen in the dawn from the tents on the beaches

Grey Talthybius’ chariot waits in the Ilian portals,

Far voice of the Hellene demigod challenges timeless Troya.

Thus has he said to us: ‘Know you not Doom when she walks in your heavens?

Feelst thou not then thy set, O sun who illuminedst Nature?

None can escape the wheel of the gods and its vast revolutions!

Fate demands the joy and pride of the earth for the Argive,

Asia’s wealth for the lust of the young barbarian nations.

Sink eclipsed in the circle vast of my radiance; Troya,

Joined to my northern realms deliver the East to the Hellene;

Ilian, to Hellas be yoked; wide Asia, fringe thou Pineus.

Lay down golden Helen, a sacrifice lovely and priceless

Cast by your weakness and fall on immense Necessity’s altar;

Yield to the grasp of my longing Polyxena, Hecuba’s deep-bosomed daughter,

Her whom my heart desires. Accept from me¹ peace and her healing

Joy of mornings secure and death repulsed from your hearthsides.

Yield these² and live, else I leap on you, Fate in front, Hades behind me.

Bound to the gods by an oath I return not again from the battle

Till from high Ida my shadow extends to the Made and Euphrates.

Let not your victories deceive you, steps that defeat has imagined;

Hear not the voice of your heroes; their fame is a trumpet in Hades:

Only they conquer while yet my horses champ free in their stables.

Earth cannot long resist the man whom Heaven has chosen;

Gods with him walk; his chariot is led; his arm is assisted.

High rings the Hellene challenge, earth waits for the Ilian answer.

Always man’s Fate hangs poised on the flitting breath of a moment;

Called by some word, by some gesture it leaps, then ’tis graven, ’tis granite.

Speak! by what gesture high shall the stern gods recognise Troya?

Sons of the ancients, race of the gods, inviolate city,

Firmer my spear shall I grasp or cast from my hand and for ever?

¹I bring to you ²then

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Search in your hearts if your fathers still dwell in them, children of Teucer.”

So Deiphobus spoke and the nation heard him in silence,

Awed by the shadow vast of doom, indignant with Fortune.

Calm from his seat Antenor arose as a wrestler arises,

Tamer of beasts in the cage of the lions, eyeing the monsters

Brilliant, tawny of mane, and he knows if his courage waver,

Falter his eye or his nerve be surprised by the gods that are hostile,

Death will leap on him there in the crowded helpless arena.

Fearless Antenor arose, and a murmur swelled in the meeting

Cruel and threatening, hoarse like the voice of the sea upon boulders;

Hisses thrilled through the roar and one man cried to another,

“Lo, he will speak of peace who has swallowed the gold of Achaia!

Surely the people of Troy are eunuchs who suffer Antenor

Rising unharmed in the agora. Are there not stones in the city?

Surely the steel grows dear in the land when a traitor can flourish.”

Calm like a god or a summit Antenor stood in the uproar.

But as he gazed on his soul came memory dimming the vision;

For he beheld his past and the agora crowded and cheering,

Passionate, full of delight while Antenor spoke to the people,

Troy that he loved and his fatherland proud of her eloquent statesman.

Tears to his eyes came thick and he gripped at the staff he was holding.

Mounting his eyes met fully the tumult, mournful and thrilling,

Conquering men’s hearts with a note of doom in its sorrowful sweetness.

“People of Ilion, blood of my blood, O race of Antenor,

Once will I speak though you slay me; for who would shrink from

destruction

Knowing that soon of his city and nation, his house and his dear ones

All that remains will be a couch of trampled ashes? Athene,

Slain today may I join the victorious souls of our fathers,

Not for the anguish be kept and the irremediable weeping.

Loud yet will I speak the word that the gods have breathed in my spirit,

Strive this last time to save the death-destined. Who are these clamour

‘Hear him not, the gold of the Greeks bought his words and his throat is accursed ?’

Troy whom my counsels made great, hast thou heard this roar of their frenzy

Tearing thy ancient bosom? Is it thy voice heaven-abandoned, my mother?

O my country, O my creatress, earth of my longings!

Earth where our fathers lie in their sacred ashes undying,

Memoried temples shelter the shrines of our gods and the altars

Pure where we worshipped, the beautiful children smile on us passing,

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Women divine and the men of our nation! O land where our childhood

Played at a mother’s feet mid the trees and the hills of our country

Hoping our manhood toiled and our youth had its seekings for godhead

Thou for our age keepst repose mid the love and the honour of kinsmen

Silent our relics shall lie with the city guarding our ashes!

Earth who hast fostered our parents, earth who hast given us¹ our offspring

Soil that created our race where fed from the bosom of Nature

Happy our children shall dwell²in the storied homes of their father

Souls that our souls have stamped, sweet forms of ourselves when we perish!

Once even then have they seen thee in their hearts, or dreamed of thee over

Who from thy spirit revolt and only thy name make an idol

Hating thy faithful sons and the cult of thy ancient ideal!

Wake, O my mother divine, remember thy gods and thy wisdom,

Silence the tongues that degrade thee, prophets profane of thy godhead.

Madmen, to think that a man who has offered his life for his country

Served her with words and deeds and adored with victories and triumphs

Ever could think of enslaving her breast to the heel of a foeman!

Surely Antenor’s halls are empty, he begs from the stranger

Leading his sons and his children’s sons by the hand in the market,

Showing his rags since his need is so bitter of gold from the Argives!

You who demand a reply when Laocoon lessens Antenor,

Hush then your feeble roar and your ear to the past and the distance

Turn. You fields that are famous for ever, reply for me calling,

Fields of the mighty mown by my sword’s edge, Chersonese conquered,

Thrace and her snows where we fought on the frozen streams and were victors

Then when they were unborn who are now your delight and your leaders.

Answer return, you columns of Ilus, here where my counsels

Made Troy mightier guiding her safe through the shocks of her foemen.

Gold! I have heaped it up high, I am rich with the spoils of your haters.

It was your fathers dead who gave me that wealth as my guerdon,

Now my reproach, your fathers who saw not the Greeks round their ramparts:

They were not cooped by an upstart race in the walls of Apollo,

Saw not Hector slain and Troilus dragged by his coursers.

Far³over wrathful Jaxartes they rode; the shaken Achaian

Prostrate adored their strength who now shouts at your portals and conquers⁴

Then when Antenor guided Troy, this old man, this traitor,

Not Laocoon, nay, not even Pans nor Hector.

¹cherished ²reign ³Fast ⁴gates as your victor

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But I have changed, I have grown a niggard of blood and of treasure,

Selfish, chilled as old men seem to the young and the headstrong,

Counselling safety and ease, not the ardour of noble decisions.

Come to my house and behold, my house that was filled once with voices.

Sons whom the high gods envied me crowded the halls that are silent.

Where are they now? They are dead, their voices are silent in Hades,

Fallen slaying the foe in a war between sin and the Furies.

Silent they went to the battle to die unmourned for their country,

Die as they knew in vain. Do I keep now the last ones remaining,

Sparing their blood that my house may endure? Is there any in Troya

Speeds to the front of the mellay outstripping the sons of Antenor?

Let him arise and speak and proclaim it and bid me be silent.

Heavy is this war that you love on my heart and I hold you as madmen

Doomed by the gods, abandoned by Pallas, by Hera afflicted.

Who would not hate to behold his work undone by the foolish?

Who would not weep if he saw Laocoon ruining Troya,

Paris doomed in his beauty, Aeneas slain by his velour?

Still you need to be taught that the high gods see and remember,

Dream that they care not if justice be done on the earth or oppression!

Happy to live, aspire while you violate man and the immortals!

Vainly the sands of Time have been strewn with the ruins of empires,

Signs that the gods have left, but in vain. For they look for a nation,

One that can conquer itself having conquered the world, but they find none.

None has been able to hold all the gods in his bosom unstaggered.

All have grown drunken with force and have gone down to Hell and to Ate.

‘All have been thrust from their heights,’ say the fools; ‘we shall live and for ever.

We are the people at last, the children, the favourites; all things

Only to us are permitted.’ They too descend to the silence,

Death receives their hopes and the void their stirrings of action.

“Eviller fate there is none than life too long among mortals.

I have conversed with the great who have gone, I have fought in their war-cars;

Tros I have seen, Laomedon’s hand has lain¹on my temples.

Now I behold Laocoon, now our leader²is Paris.

First when Phryx by the Hellespont reared to the cry of the Ocean

Hewing her stones as vast as his thoughts his high-seated fortress,

Planned he a lair for a beast of prey, for a pantheress dire-souled

Crouched in the hills for her bound or self-gathered against the avenger?

¹dwelt ²greatest

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Dardanaus shepherded Asia’s coasts and her sapphire-girt islands.

Mild was his rule like the blessing of rain upon fields in the summer.

Gladly the harried coasts reposed confessing the Phrygian,

Caria, Lycia’s kings and the Paphlagon, strength of the Mysian;

Minos’ Crete recovered the sceptre of old Rhadamanthus.

Ilus and Tros had strength in the fight like a far-striding Titan’s:

Troy triumphant following the urge of their souls to the vastness

[Helmeted, crowned like a queen of the gods with the-fates for her coursers]*

Rode through the driving sleet of the spears to Indus and Oxus.

Then twice over she conquered the vanquished, with peace as in battle;

There where discord had clashed, sweet Peace sat girded with plenty,

There where tyranny counted her blows came the hands of a father.

Neither was¹ Teucer a soul like your chiefs² who refounded this nation.

Such was the antique and noble tradition of Troy in her founders,

Builders of power that endured; but it perishes lost to their offspring,

Trampled, scorned by an arrogant age, by a violent nation.

Strong Anchises trod it down trampling victorious onwards,

Stern as his sword and hard as the silent bronze of his armour.

More than another I praise the man who is mighty and steadfast,

Even as Ida the mountain I praise, a refuge for lions;

But in the council I laud him not, he who a god for his kindred

Lives for the rest without bowels of pity or fellowship, lone-souled,

Scorning the world that he rules, who untamed by the weight of an empire

Holds allies as subjects, subjects as slaves and drives to the battle,

Careless more of their wills than the coursers yoked to his war-car.

Therefore they fought while they feared, but gladly abandon us falling.

Yet had they gathered to Teucer in the evil days of our nation.

Where are they now? Do they gather then to the dreaded Anchises?

Or has Aeneas helped with his counsels hateful to wisdom?

Hateful is this, abhorred of the gods, imagined by Ate

When against subjects murmuring discord and faction appointed

Scatter unblest gold, the heart of a people is poisoned,

Virtue pursued and, baseness triumphs tongued like a harlot,

Brother against brother arrayed that the rule may endure of a stranger.

Yes, but it lasts! For its hour. The high gods watch in their silence,

Mute they endure for a while that the doom may be swifter and greater.

Hast thou then lasted, O Troy? Lo, the Greeks at thy gates and Achilles.

Dream, when Virtue departs, that Wisdom will linger, her sister!

Wisdom has turned from your hearts; shall Fortune dwell with the foolish?

* Brackets in the original. ¹had ²chiefs’

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Fatal oracles came to you great-tongued, vaunting of empires

Stretched from the risen sun to his rest in the occident waters,

Dreams of a city throned on the hills with her foot on the nations.

Meanwhile the sword was prepared for our breasts and the flame for our housetops.

Wake, awake, O my people! the fire-brand mounts up your doorsteps;

Gods who deceived to slay, press swords on your children’s bosoms.

See, O ye blind, ere death in pale countries open your eyelids!

Hear, O ye deaf, the sounds in your ears and the voices of evening!

Young men who vaunt in your strength! when the voice of this aged Antenor

Governed your fathers’ youth, all the Orient was joined to our banners.

Macedon leaned to the East and her princes yearned to the victor,

Scythians worshipped in Ilion’s shrines, the Phoenician trader

Bartered her tokens, Babylon’s wise men paused at our thresholds;

Fair-haired sons of the snows came rapt towards golden Troya

Drawn by the song and the glory. Strymon sang hymns unto Ida,

Hoarse Chaleidice, dim Chersonesus married their waters

Under the o’erarching yoke of Troy twixt the term-posts of Ocean.

Meanwhile far through the world your fortunes led by my counsels

Followed their lure like women snared by a magical tempter:

High was their chant as they paced and it came from continents distant.

Turn now and hear! what voice approaches? what glitter of armies?

Loud upon Trojan beaches the tread and the murmur of Hellas!

Hark! ’tis the Achaian’s paean rings o’er the Pergaman waters!

So wake the dreams of Aeneas; reaped is Laocoon’s harvest.

Speakers whose counsels persuaded our strength from the labour before us,

Artisans new of your destiny fashioned this far-spreading downfall,

Counsellors blind who scattered your strength to the hooves of the Scythian,

Barren victories, trophies of skin-clad Illyrian pastors.

Who but the fool and improvident, who but the dreamer and madman

Leaves for the far and ungrasped earth’s close and provident labour?

Children of earth, our mother gives tokens, she lays down her sign-posts,

Step by step to advance on her bosom, to grow by her seasons,

Order our works by her patience and limit our thought by her spaces.

But you had chiefs who were demigods, souls of an earth-scorning stature,

Minds that saw vaster than life and strengths that God's hour could not limit!

These men seized upon Troy as the tool of their giant visions,

Dreaming of Africa’s suns and bright Hesperian orchards,

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Carthage our mart and our feet on the sunset hills of the Latins.

Ilion’s hinds in the dream ploughed Libya, sowed Italy’s cornfields,

Troy stretched to Gades; even the gods and the Fates had grown Trojan.

So are the natures of men uplifted by Heaven in its satire.

Scorning the bit of the gods, despisers of justice and measure,

Losing the shape of man in a dream that is splendid and monstrous.

Titans, vaunting they stride and the world resounds with their footsteps;

Titans, clanging they fall and the world is full of their ruin.

Children, you dreamed with them, heard the roar of the Atlantic breakers

Welcome your keels and the Isles of the Blest grew your wonderful gardens;

Lulled in the dream, you saw not the black-drifting march of the storm-rack,

Heard not the galloping wolves of the doom and the howl of their hunger.

Greece in her peril united her jarring clans; you suffered

Patient, preparing the north, the wisdom and silence of Peleus,

Atreus’ craft and the Argives gathered to King Agamemnon.

But there were prophecies, Pythian oracles, mutterings from Delphi.

How shall they prosper who haste after auguries, oracles, whispers,

Dreams that walk in the night and voices obscure of the silence?

Touches are these from the gods that bewilder the brain to its ruin.

One sole oracle helps, still armoured in courage and prudence

Patient and heedful to toil at the work that is near in the daylight.

Leave to the night its phantoms, leave to the future its curtain!

Only today Heaven gave to mortal man for his labour.

If thou hadst bowed not thy mane, O Troy, to the child and the dreamer,

Hadst thou been faithful to¹Wisdom the counsellor seated and ancient,

Then would the hour not have dawned when Paris lingered in Sparta

Led by the goddess fatal and beautiful, white Aphrodite.

Man, shun the impulses dire that spring armed from thy nature’s abysms!

Dread the dark rose of the gods, flee the honey that tempts from its petals!

Therefore the black deed was done and the hearth that welcomed was sullied.

Sin-called the Fury uplifted her tresses of gloom o’er the nations

Maddening the earth with the scream of her blood-thirst, bowelless, stone-eyed,

Claiming her victims from God and bestriding the hate and the clamour.

Yet midst the stroke and the wail when men’s eyes were blind with the blood-mist,

Still had the high gods mercy remembering²Teucer and Ilus.

Sped by the hand of the Thunderer Discord flaming from Ida

¹If thou hadst kept faith with ²recalling

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Glared from the ships in her wrath¹ through the camp of the victor Achaians, -

Love to the discord added her flowerlike lips of Briseis;

Faltering lids of Polyxena conquered the strength of Pelides.

Vainly those helpers high² have opened the gates of salvation!

Vainly the winds of their mercy have breathed on our fevered existence!

Man his passion prefers to the voice that guides from the immortals.³

These too⁴ were here whom Hera had chosen to ruin this nation:

Charioteers cracking the whips of their speed on the paths of destruction,

Demigods they! they have come down from Heaven glad to that labour;

Filled is⁵ the world with the fame of their wheels as they race down to Hades.

O that alone they could reach it! O that pity could soften

Harsh Necessity’s dealings, sparing our innocent children,

Saving the Trojan women and aged from bonds and the sword-edge!

These had not sinned whom you slay in your madness! Ruthless, O mortals,

Must you be then to yourselves, when the gods even faltering with pity

Turn from the grief that must come and the agony vast and the weeping?

Say not the road of escape sinks too low for your arrogant treading.

Pride is not for our clay; the earth, not heaven was our mother

And we are even as the ant in our toil and the beast in our dying;

Only who cling to the hands of the gods can rise up from the earth-mire.

Children, lie prone to their scourge, that your hearts may revive in their sunshine.

This is our lot! when the anger of-heaven has passed then the mortal

Raises his head; soon he heals his heart and forgets he has suffered.

Yet if resurgence from weakness and shame were withheld from the creature,

Every fall without morrow, who then would counsel submission?

But since the height of mortal fortune ascending must stumble,

Fallen, again ascend, since death like birth is our portion,

Ripening, mowed, to be sown again like corn by the farmer,

Let us be patient still with the gods and be clay for their handling.

Dream not defeat I welcome. Think not to Hellas submitting

Death of proud hope I would seal. Not this have I counselled, O nation,

But to be even as your high-crested forefathers, greatest of mortals.

Troya of old enringed by the hooves of Cimmerian armies

Flamed to the heavens from her plains and her smoke-blackened citadel sheltered

¹Hundred-eyed )

) glared from the ships

Hundred-voiced )

²Vainly the gods who pity ³heavens. ⁴They still ⁵Echoes

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Hardly¹ the joyless rest of her sons and the wreck of her greatness.

Courage and wisdom survived in that fall and a stern-eyed prudence

Helped her to live; disguised from her mightiness Troy crouched weeping.

Teucer descended whose genius worked at this kingdom and nation,

Patient, scrupulous, wise, like a craftsman carefully toiling

Over a helmet or over a breastplate, testing it always,

Toiled in the eye of the Masters of all and had heed of its labour.

So in the end they would not release him like souls that are common;

They out of Ida sent into Ilion Pallas Athene;

Secret she came and he went with her into the luminous silence.

Teucer’s children after their sire completed his labour.

Now too, O people, front adversity self-gathered, silent.

Veil thyself, leonine mighty Ilion, hiding thy greatness!

Be as thy father Teucer; be as a cavern for lions;

Be as a Fate that crouches! Wordless and stern for your vengeance

Self-gathered work in the night and secrecy shrouding your bosoms.

Let not the dire heavens know of it; let not the foe seize a whisper!

Ripen the hour of your stroke, while your words drip sweeter than honey.

Sure am I, friends, you will turn from death at my voice, you will hear me!

Some day yet I shall gaze on the ruins of haughty Mycenae.

Is this not better than Ilion cast to the sword of her haters,

Is this not happier than Troya captured and wretchedly burning,

Time to await in his stride when the southern and northern Achaians

Gazing with dull distaste now over their severing isthmus

Hate-filled shall move to the shock by the spur of the gods in them driven,

Pelops march upon Attica, Thebes descend on the Spartan?

Then shall the hour now kept in heaven for us ripen to dawning,

Then shall Victory cry to our banners over the Ocean

Calling our sons with her voice immortal. Children of Ilus,

Then shall Troy rise in her strength and stride over Greece up to Gades.”

So Antenor spoke and the mind of the hostile assembly

Moved and swayed with his words like the waters ruled by Poseidon.

Even as the billows rebellious lashed by the whips of the tempest

Curvet and rear their crests like the hooded wrath of a serpent,

Green-eyed under their cowls sublime, - unwilling they journey

Foam-bannered, hoarse-voiced, shepherded, forced by the wind, to the margin

Meant for their rest, and can turn not at all, though they rage, on their driver, -

¹Mutely

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Last with a sullen applause and consenting lapse into thunder,

Where they were led all the while they sink: down huge and astonished,

So in their souls that withstood and obeyed and hated the yielding,

Lashed by his censure, indignant, the Trojans moved towards his purpose:

Sometimes a roar arose, then only, weakened, rarer,

Angry murmurs swelled between sullen stretches of silence;

Last, a reluctant applause broke dull from the throats of the commons.

Silent raged in their hearts Laocoon’s following daunted;

Troubled the faction of Paris turned to the face of their leader.

He as yet rose not; careless he sat in his beauty and smiling,

Gazing with brilliant eyes at the sculptured pillars of Ilus.

Doubtful, swayed by Antenor, waited in silence the nation.

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Eagerly, spurred by Ares swift in their souls to the war-cry,

All now pressed to their homes for the food of their strength in the battle;

Ilion turned her thoughts in a proud expectancy seaward

Waiting to hear the sounds that she loved and the cry of the mellay.

Now to their citadel Priam’s sons returned with their father,

Now from the gates Talthybius issued grey in his chariot;

But in the halls of Anchises Aeneas not doffing his breastpiece.

Hastily ate of the corn of his country, cakes of the millet.

Doubled with wild-deer’s flesh, from the quiet hands of Creüsa.

She, as he ate, with her calm eyes watching him smiled on her husband:

“Ever thou hastest to battle, O warrior, ever thou fightest

Far in the front of the ranks and thou seekest out Locrian Ajax,

Turnest thy ear to the roar for the dangerous shout of Tydides;

There, once heard, leaving all thou drivest, O stark in thy courage.

Yet am I blest among women who tremble not, left in thy mansion,

Quiet at old Anchises’ feet when I see thee in vision

Sole with the shafts hissing round thee and say to my quivering spirit,

‘Now he is striking at Ajax, now he has met Diomedes.’

Such are the mighty twain who are ever near to protect thee,

Phoebus, the Thunderer’s son, and thy mother, gold Aphrodite;

Such are the fates that demand thee, O destined head of the future.

But though my thoughts for their own are not troubled, always, Aeneas,

Sore is my heart with pity for other Ilian women

Who in this battle are losing their children and well-loved husbands,

Brothers too dear, for the eyes that are wet, for the hearts that are silent.

Will not this war then end that thunders for ever round Troya?”

But to Creüsa the hero answered, the son of Anchises:

“Surely the gods protect, yet is Death too always mighty.

Most in his shadowy envy he strikes at the brave and the lovely,

Grudging works to abridge their days and to widow the sunlight;

Most, disappointed, he rages against the beloved of Heaven;

Striking their lives through their hearts he mows down their loves and their pleasures.

Truly thou say’st, thou need’st not to fear for my life in the battle;

Ever for thine I fear lest he find thee out in his anger,

Missing my head in the fight, when he comes here crossed in his godhead.

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Yet shall Phoebus protect and my mother, gold Aphrodite."
     But to Aeneas answered the tranquil lips of Creüsa:
"So may it be that I go before thee, seeing, Aeneas,
Over my dying eyes thy lips bend down for the parting.
Blissfullest end is this for a woman here mid earth's sorrows;
Afterwards there we hope that the hands shall join which were parted."
     So she spoke, not knowing the gods: but Aeneas departing
Clasped his father's knees, the ancient mighty Anchises:
"Bless me, my father; I go to the battle. Strong with thy blessing
Even today may I hurl down Ajax, slay Diomedes,
And on the morrow gaze on the empty beaches of Troas."
Troubled and joyless, nought replying to warlike Aeneas
Long Anchises sat unmoving, silent, sombre,
Gazing into his soul with eyes that were closed to the sunlight.
"Prosper, Aeneas," slowly he answered him, "son of a goddess,
Prosper, Aeneas; and if for Troy some doom is preparing,
Suffer always the will of the gods with a piety constant.
Only they will what Necessity fashions, impelled by the Silence.
Labour and war she has given to man as the law of his transience.
Work;¹ she shall give thee the crown of thy deeds or their ending appointed,
Whether glorious thou pass or in silent shadows forgotten.
But what thy mother commands perform ever, loading thy vessels.
Who can know what the gods have hid with the mist of our hopings?"
     So²from the house of his fathers Aeneas rapidly striding
Came to the city echoing now with the wheels of the chariots,
Clanging with arms and astream with the warlike tramp of her thousands.
Fast through the press he strode and men turning knew Aeneas,
Greatened in heart and went on with loftier thoughts towards battle.
He through the noise and the crowd to Antenor's high-built mansion
Striding came, and he turned to its courts and the bronze of its threshold
Trod which had suffered the feet of so many princes departed.
But as he crossed its brazen square from the hall there came running,
Leaping up light to his feet and laughing with sudden pleasure,
Eurus the youngest son of Polydamas. Clasping the fatal
War-hardened hand with a palm that was smooth as a maiden's or infant's,
"Well art thou come, Aeneas," he said, "and good fortune has sent thee!
Now I shall go to the field; thou wilt speak with my grandsire Antenor,
And he shall hear thee though chid by his heart reluctant. Rejoicing
I shall go forth in thy car or warring by Penthesilea,

¹Fight ²Then

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Famous, give to her grasp the spear that shall smite down Achilles."
Smiling answered Aeneas, "Surely will, Eurus, thy prowess
Carry thee far to the front; thou shalt fight with Epeus and slay him.
Who shall say that this hand was not chosen to pierce Menelaus?
But for a while with the bulls should it rather strive, 0 hero,
Till in the play and the wrestle its softness grow hard¹ for the smiting."
Eagerly Eurus answered, "But they have told me, Aeneas,
This is the last of our fights for today will Penthesilea
Meet Achilles in battle and slay him ending the Argives.
Then shall I never have mixed in this war that is famous for ever.
What shall 1 say when my hairs are white like the aged Antenor's?
Men will ask, 'And what were thy deeds in the warfare Titanic?
Whom didst thou slay of the Argives, son of Polydamas, venging
Bravely thy father?' Then must 1 say, 'I lurked in the city.
I was too young and only ascending the Ilian ramparts
Saw the return or the flight, but never the deed and the triumph'?
Friend, if thou take me not forth, I shall die of grief ere the sunset."
Plucking the hand of Aeneas he drew him into the mansion
Vast; and over the floor of the spacious hall they hastened
Laughing, the gracious child and the mighty hero and statesman,
Flower of a present stock and the burdened star of the future.
     Meanwhile girt by his sons and the sons of his sons in his chamber
Cried² to the remnants left of his blood the aged Antenor:
“Hearken you who are sprung from my loins and children, their offspring!
None shall again go forth to the fight who is kin to Antenor.
Weighed with my curse he shall go and the spear-points of the Argives
Meet him wroth; he shall die in his sin and his name be forgotten.
Oft have I sent forth my blood to be spilled in vain in the battle
Fighting for Troy and her greatness earned by my toil and my fathers'.
Now all the debt has been paid; she rejects us driven by the immortals.
Much do we owe to the mother who bore us, much to our country;
But at the last our life is ours and the gods' and the future's.
Gather the gold of my house and our kin, 0 ye sons of Antenor.
Warned by a voice in my soul I will go forth tonight from this city,
Fleeing the doom and bearing my treasures; the ships shall receive them
Gathered, new-keeled by my care and the gods', in the narrow Propontis.
Over God's waters guided, treading the rage of Poseidon,
Bellying out with their sails let them cleave to the untravelled distance
Ocean's crests and resign to their fates the doomed and the evil."

¹is trained ²Spoke

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 So Antenor spoke and his children heard him in silence;
Awed by his voice and the dread of his curse they obeyed, though in sorrow.
Halamus only replied to his father: "Dire are the white hairs
Reverend, loved, of a father, dreadful his curse to his children.
Yet in my heart there is one who cries, 'tis the voice of my country,
She for whose sake I would be in Tartarus tortured for ever.
Pardon me then if thou wilt; if the gods can, then let them pardon.
For I will sleep in the dust of Troy embracing her ashes,
There where Polydamas sleeps and the many comrades I cherished.
So let me go to the darkness remembered or wholly forgotten,
Yet having fought for my country, true in my fall to my nation."
     Then in his aged wrath to Halamus answered Antenor:
"Go then and perish doomed with the doomed and the hated of heaven;
Nor shall the gods forgive thee dying nor shall thy father."
Out from the chamber Halamus strode with grief in his bosom
Wrestling with wrath and he went to his doom nor looked back at his dear

ones.
Crossing the hall the son of Antenor and son of Anchises
Met in the paths of their fates where they knotted and crossed for the parting,
One with the curse of the gods and his sire fast wending to Hades,
Fortunate, blessed the other; yet equal their minds were and virtues.
Cypris' son to the Antenorid: "Thee I have sought and thy brothers,
Bough of Antenor; sore is our need today of thy counsels,
Endless our want of their arms that are strong and their hearts that recoil not
Meeting myriads stark with the spear in unequal battle."
Halamus answered him: "I will go forth to the palace of Priam,
There where Troy yet lives and far from the halls of my fathers;
There will I speak, not here. For my kin they repose in the mansion
Sitting unarmed in their halls while their brothers fall in the battle."
Eurus eagerly answered the hero: "Me rather, therefore,
Take to the fight with you; I will make war on the Greeks for my uncles;
One for all I will fill their place in the shock with the foemen."
     But from his chamber-door Antenor heard and rebuked him:
"Scamp of my heart, thou torment! into thy chamber and rest there,
Bound with cords lest thou cease, thou flutter-brain, scourged into quiet;
So shall thy lust of the fight be healed and our mansion grow tranquil."
Chid by the old man Eurus slunk from the hall discontented,
Yet with a dubious smile like a moonbeam lighting his beauty.

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But to Antenor the Dardanid born from the white Aphrodite:
"Late the Antenorids learn to flinch from the spears of the Argives,
Even this boy of their blood has Polydamas' heart and his valour.
Nor should a life that was honoured and noble be stained in its ending.
Nay, then, the mood of a child would shame a grey-headed wisdom,
If for the fault of the people virtue and Troy were forgotten.
For, though the people hear us not, yet are we bound to our nation:
Over the people the gods are; over a man is his country;
This is the deity first adored by the hearths of the noble.
For by our nation's will we are ruled in the home and the battle
And for our nation's weal we offer our lives and our children's.
Not by their own wills led nor their passions men rise to their manhood,
Selfishly seeking their good, but the gods' and the State's and the fathers'."

        Wroth Antenor replied to the warlike son of Anchises:
"Great is the soul in thee housed and stern is thy will, O Aeneas;
Onward it moves undismayed to its goal though a city be ruined.
They too guide thee who deepest see of the unageing immortals,
One with her heart and one in his spirit, Cypris and Phoebus.
Yet might a man not knowing this think as he watched thee, Aeneas,
'Spurring Priam's race to its fall he endangers this city,
Hoping to build a throne out of ruins sole in the Troad.'
I too have gods who warn me and lead, Athene and Hera.
Not as the ways of other mortals are theirs who are guided,
They whose eyes are the gods and they walk by a light that is secret."
Coldly Aeneas made answer, stirred into wrath by the taunting:
"High wert thou always, nurtured in wisdom, ancient Antenor.
Walk then favoured and led, yet watch lest passion and evil
Feign auguster names and mimic the gait of the deathless."
And with a smile on his lips but wrath in his bosom answered,
Wisest of men but with wisdom of mortals, aged Antenor:
"Led or misled we are mortals and walk by a light that is given;
Most they err who deem themselves most from error excluded.
Nor shalt thou hear in this battle the shout of the men of my lineage
Holding the Greeks as once and driving back Fate from their country.
His alone will be heard for a space while the stern gods are patient
Even now who went forth a victim self-offered to Hades,
Last whom their wills have plucked from the fated house of Antenor."
     They now with wrath in their bosoms sundered for ever and parted.
Forth from the hall of Antenor Aeneas rapidly striding

Page - 446

Passed¹ once more through the city hurrying now with its car-wheels,
Filled with a mightier rumour of war and the march of its thousands,
Till at Troy's upward curve he found the Antenorid crestward
Mounting the steep incline that climbed to the palace of Priam
White in her proud and armed citadel. Silent, ascending
Hardly their feet had attempted the hill when behind them they hearkened
Sweet-tongued a call and the patter and hurry of light-running sandals;
Turning they beheld with a flush on his cheeks and a light on his lashes
Challenging mutely and pleading the boyish beauty of Eurus.
"Racer to mischief," said Halamus, "couldst thou not sit in thy chamber?
Surely cords and the rod await thee, Eurus, returning."
Answered with laughter the child, "I have broken through ranks of the fighters,
Dived under chariot-wheels to arrive here and I return not.
I too for counsel of battle have come to the palace of Priam."
Burdened with thought they mounted slowly the road of their fathers,
Breasting the Ilian hill where Laomedon's mansion was tented,
They from the crest down gazing saw their country's house-tops
Under their feet and heard the murmur of Troya below them.
But in the palace of Priam coming and going of house-thralls
Filled all the corridors; smoke from the kitchens curled in its plenty
Rich with savour and breathed from the labouring lungs of Hephaestus.
Far in the halls and the chambers voices travelled and clustered,
Anklets jangling ran and sang back from doorway to doorway,
Mocking with music of speed and its laughters the haste of the happy,
Sound came of arms, there was tread of the great, there were murmurs of women, -
Voices glad of the doomed in Laomedon's marvellous mansion.
Six were the halls of its splendour, a hundred and one were its chambers
Lifted high upon columns that soared like the thoughts of its dwellers,
Thoughts that transcended the earth though they sank down at last into ashes.
So had Apollo dreamed to his lyre; and its tops were a grandeur
Domed, as if seeking to roof men's lives with a hint of the heavens;
Marble his columns rose and with marble his roofs were appointed,
Conquered wealth of the world in its largeness suffered, supporting
Purities of marble, glories of gold. Nor only of matter
Blazed there the brutal pomps, but images mystic or mighty
Crowded ceiling and wall, a work that the gods even admire

¹Pressed

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 Hardly believing that forms like these were imagined by mortals
Here upon earth where sight is a blur and the soul lives encumbered.
Scrolls that remembered in gems the thoughts austere of the ancients
Bordered the lines of the stone and the forms of serpent and Naiad
Ran in relief on those walls of pride in the palace of Priam
Mingled with Dryads who tempted and fled and Satyrs who followed,
Sports of the nymphs in the sea and the woods and their meetings with mortals,
Sessions and battles of Trojan demigods, deaths that were famous,
Wars and loves of men and the deeds of the golden immortals.
Pillars sculptured with gods and with giants soared from bases
Lion-carved or were seated on bulls and bore into grandeur
Amply those halls where they soared, or in¹lordliness slenderly fashioned,
Dressed in flowers and reeds like virgins standing on Ida,
Guarded the screens of stone and divided alcove and chamber.
Ivory carved and broidered robes and the riches of Indus
Cherished in sandalwood triumphed and teemed in the palace of Priam;
Doors that were carven and fragrant sheltered the joys of its princes.
     Here in a chamber of luminous privacy Paris was arming.
Near him moved Helen, a whiteness divine and intent on her labour
Fastened his cuirass, bound the greaves and settled the hauberk,
Thrilling his limbs with her touch that was heaven to the yearning of mortals,
She with her hands of delight caressing the senseless metal
Pressed her lips to his brilliant armour; she bowed down, she whispered:
"Cuirass, allowed by the gods, protect the beauty of Paris:
Keep for me that for which country was lost and my child and my brothers."
Yearning she bent to his feet, to the sandal-strings of her lover;
Then as she gazed up, changed grew her mood; for the Daemon within her
Rose that had banded Greece and was burning Troy into ashes.
Slowly a smile that was perfect and perilous over her beauty
Dawned like the sunlight on Paradise; strangely she looked on her lover.
So might a goddess have gazed as she played with the love of a mortal
Passing an hour on the earth ere she rose up white to Olympus.
"So art thou winner, Paris, yet and thy spirit ascendant
Leads this Troy where thou wilt, 0 thou mighty one veiled in thy beauty
First in the dance and the revel, first in the joy of the mellay;
Who would not leave for thy sake and repent it not country and homestead?
Winning thou reignest still over Troy, over Fate, over Helen.
Always so canst thou will? Has Death no claim on thy beauty,

¹to

Page – 448

Fate no scourge for thy sins? How the years have passed by in a glory,
Years of this heaven of the gods, 0 ravisher, since from my hearthstone
Seizing thou borest me compelled to thy ships and my joy on the waters.
Troy is enringed with the spears, her children fall and her glories,
Mighty souls of heroes have gone down prone to the darkness;
Thou and I abide! the mothers wail for our pleasure.
Wilt thou then keep me for ever, 0 son of Priam, in Troya ?
Fate was my mother, they say, and Zeus for this hour begot me.
Art thou a god too, 0 hero, disguised in this robe of the mortal,
Brilliant, careless of death and of sin as if sure of thy rapture?
What then if Fate today were to lay her hand on thee, Paris ?"
Calmly he looked on the face of which Greece was enamoured, the body
For whose desire great Troy was a sacrifice, tranquil regarded
Lovely and dire on the lips he loved that smile of a goddess,
Saw the daughter of Zeus in the woman, yet was not shaken.
"Temptress of Argos," he answered, "thou snare for the world to be seized in,
Thou then hop'st to escape! But the gods could not take thee, 0 Helen,
How then thy will that to mine is a captive, or how, though with battle,
He who has lost thee, unhappy, the Spartan, bright Menelaus?
All things yield to a man and Zeus is himself his accomplice
When like a god he wills without remorse or longing.
Thou on this earth art mine since I claimed thee beheld, not speaking,
But with thy lids that fell thou veiledst thy heart of compliance.
Then in whatever beyond I shall know how to take thee, 0 Helen,
Even as here upon earth I knew, in heaven as in Sparta;
I on Elysian fields will enjoy thee as now in the Troad."
Silent a moment she lingered like one who is lured by a music
Rapturous, heard by himself alone and his lover in heaven,
Then in her beauty compelling she rose up divine among women.
"Yes, it is good," she cried, "what the gods do and actions of mortals:
Good is the play of the world; it is good, the joy and the torture.
Praised be the hour of the gods when I wedded bright Menelaus!
Praised, more praised the keels that severed the seas towards Helen
Churning the senseless waves that knew not the bliss of their burden!
Praised to the end the hour when I passed through the doors of my husband
Laughing with joy in my heart for the arms that bore and enchained me!
Never can Death undo what life has done for us, Paris.
Nor, whatever betide, can the hour be unlived of our rapture.
This too is good that nations should meet in the shock of the battle,

Page – 449

Heroes be slain and a theme be made for the songs of the poets,
Songs that shall thrill with the name of Helen, the beauty of Paris.
Well is this also that empires should fall for the eyes of a woman,
Well that for Helen Hector ended, Memnon was slaughtered,
Strong Sarpedon fell and Troilus ceased in his boyhood.
Troy for Helen burning, her glory, her empire, her riches,
This is the sign of the gods and the type of things that are mortal.
Thou who art kin to the masters of heaven, unconstrained like thy kindred
High on this ancient stage of the Troad with gods for spectators,
Play till the end thy part, 0 thou wondrous and beautiful actor:
Fight and slay the Greeks, my countrymen; victor returning
Take for reward of the play, thy delight of Argive Helen.
Force from my bosom a hint of the joy denied to the death-claimed,
Rob in the kiss of my lips a pang from the raptures of heaven."
Clasping him wholly her arms of desire were a girdle of madness,
Cestus divine of the dread Aphrodite. He with her kisses
Flushed like the gods with unearthly wine and rejoiced in his ruin.
Thus while they conversed now in this hour that was near to their parting
Last upon earth, a fleet-footed slave-girl came to the chamber:
"Paris, thy father and mother desire thee; there in the strangers'
Outer hall Aeneas and Halamus wait for thy coming."
So with the Argive he wended to Priam's ample chamber
Far in Laomedon's house where Troy looked upwards to Ida.
Priam and Hecuba there, the ancient grey-haired rulers
Waiting him sat in their chairs of ivory calm in their greatness;
Hid in her robes at their feet lay Cassandra crouched from her visions.
"Since, 0 my father," said Paris, "thy thoughts have been with me, thy blessing
Surely shall help me today in my strife with the strength of Achilles.
Surely the gods shall obey in the end the might of our spirits,
[Pallas and Hera, flame-sandalled Artemis, Zeus and Apollo.] *
Ever serve the immortal brightnesses man when he stands up
Firm with his will uplifted a steadfast flame towards the heavens,
Ares works in his heart and Hephaestus burns in his labour."
Priam replied to his son: "Forewilled by the gods, Alexander,
All things happen on earth and yet we must strive who are mortals.
Knowing all vain, yet we strive; for our nature seizing us always
Drives like the flock that is herded and urged towards shambles or pasture.
So have the god fashioned these tools of their action and pleasure;

*Brackets in the original.

Page-450

Failure and grief are their engines no less than the might of the victor;
They in the blow descend and resist in the sobs of the smitten.
Such are their goads that I too must walk in the paths that are common,
Even I who know must send for thee, moved by Cassandra.
Speak, 0 my child, since Apollo has willed it, once, and be silent."

But in her raiment hidden Cassandra answered her father:
"No, for my heart has changed since I cried for him, vexed by Apollo.
Why should I speak? For who will believe me in Troy? who believed me
Ever in Troy or the world? Event and disaster approve me
Only, my comrades, not men in their thoughts, not my brothers and kinsmen.
All by their hopes are gladly deceived and grow wroth with the warner,
Half-blind prophets of hope entertained by the gods in the mortal!
Wiser blind, if nothing they saw or only the darkness.
I too once hoped when Apollo pursued me with love in his temple,
Round me already there gleamed the ray of the vision prophetic,
Thrill of that rapture I felt and the joy of the god in his seeing,
Nor did I know that the knowledge of mortals is bound unto blindness.
Either only they walk mid the coloured dreams of the senses
Treading the greenness of earth and deeming the touch of things real,
Or if they see, by the curse of the gods their sight into falsehood
Easily turns and leads them more stumbling astray than the sightless.
So are we either blind in a darkness or dazzled by seeing.
Thus have the gods protected their purpose and baffled the sages;
Over the face of the Truth their shield of gold is extended.
But I deemed otherwise, urged by the Dreadful One, he who sits always
Veiled in us fighting the gods whom he uses. I cried to Apollo:
'Give me thy vision sheer, not such as thou giv'st to thy prophets,
Troubled though luminous; clear be the vision and ruthless to error,
Far-darting god who art veiled by the sun and by death thou art shielded.
Then I shall know that thou lovest.' He gave, alarmed and reluctant,
Driven by Fate and his heart; but I mocked him, I broke from my promise;
Courage fatal helping my heart to its ruin with laughter.
Always now I remember his face that grew tranquil and ruthless,
Hear the voice divine and implacable: 'Since thou deceivest
Even the gods and thou hast not feared to lie to Apollo,
Speak shalt thou henceforth only truth, but none shall believe thee:
Scorned in thy words, rejected yet more for their bitter fulfilment,
Scourged by the gods thou must speak though thy sick heart yearns to be
silent.
For in this play thou hast dared to play with the masters of heaven,

Page-451

Girl, it is thou who hast lost; thy voice is mine and thy bosom.'
Since then all I foreknow; therefore anguish is mine for my portion:
Since then all whom I love must perish slain by my loving.
Even of that I denied him, violent force shall bereave me
Grasped mid the flames of my city and shouts of her merciless victors."
But to Cassandra answered gently the voice of her brother:
"Sister of mine, afflicted and seized by the dreadful Apollo,
All whose eyes can pierce that curtain, gaze into dimness;
This they have glimpsed and that they imagine deceived by their natures
Seeing the forms in their hearts of dreadful things and of joyous;
As in the darkness our eyes are deceived by shadows uncertain,
Such is their sight who rend the veil that the dire gods have woven.
Busy our hearts are weaving thoughts and images always;
After their kind they see what here we call truth. So thy nature
Tender and loving, plagued by this war and its fear for thy loved ones,
Sees calamity everywhere; when the event like the vision
Seems, as in every war the beloved must fall and the cherished,
Then the heart cries, 'It has happened as all shall happen I mourn for.'
All that was bright it misses and only seizes on sorrow.
Dear, on the brightness look and if thou must prophesy, tell us
Rather of great Pelides slain by my spear in the onset."
But with a voice of grief the sister answered her brother:
"Yes, he shall fall and his slayer too shall perish and Troy with his slayer."
But in his spirit rejoicing Paris answered Cassandra:
"Let but this word come true; for the rest, the gods shall avert it.
Look once more, 0 Cassandra, and comfort the heart of thy mother,
See, 0 seer, my safe return with the spoils of Achilles."
And with a voice of grief the sister answered her brother:
"Thou shalt return for thy hour while Troy yet stands in the sunshine."
But in his spirit exultant Paris seizing the omen,
"Hearst thou, my father, my mother? She who still prophesied evil
Now perceives of our night this dawning. Yet is it grievous,
Since through a heart that we love must be pierced the heart of Achilles,
Fate, with this evil satisfied, turn in the end from Troya.
Bless me, my father, and thou, 0 Hecuba, mother long patient,
Still forgive that thy children have fallen for Helen and Paris."
Tenderly yearning his mother drew him towards her and murmured:
"All for thy hyacinth curls was forgiven even from childhood
And for thy sunlit looks, 0 wonder of charm, 0 Paris.
Paris, my son, though Troy must fall, thy mother forgives thee,

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Blessing the gods who have lent thee to me for a while in their sunshine.
Theirs are fate and result, but ours is the joy of our children;
Even the griefs are dear that come from their hands while they love us.
Fight and slay Achilles, the murderer dire of thy brothers;
Venging Hector return, my son, to the clasp of thy mother."
But in his calm august to Paris Priam the monarch:
"Victor so mightst thou come, so gladden the heart of thy mother."
Then to the aged father of Paris Helen the Argive
Bright and immortal and sad like a star that grows near to the dawning
And on its pale companions looks who now fade from its vision:
"Me too pardon and love, my parents, even Helen,
Cause of all bane and all death; but I came from the gods for this ruin
Born as a torch for the burning of empires, cursed with this beauty.
Nor have I known a father's embrace, a mother's caresses,
But to the distant gods I was born and nursed as an alien
Here by earth from fear, not affection, compelled by the thunders.
Two are her monstrous births, from the Furies and from the immortals;
Either touching mortality suffers and bears not the contact.
I have been both, a monster of doom and a portent of beauty."
Slowly Priam the monarch answered to Argive Helen:
"That which thou art the gods have made thee; thou couldst not be other:
That which thou didst, the gods have done; thou couldst not prevent them.
Who here shall blame or whom shall he pardon? Should not my people
Rail at me murmuring, 'Priam has lost what his fathers had gathered;
Cursed is this king by heaven and cursed who are born as his subjects'?
Masked the high gods act; the doer is hid by his working.
Each of us bears his punishment, fruit of a seed that's forgotten;
Each of us curses his neighbour protecting his heart with illusions:
Therefore like children we blame each other and hate and are angry.
Take, my child, the joy of the sunshine won by thy beauty.
I who lodge on this earth as an alien bound by the body,
Wearing my sorrow even as I wear the imperial purple,
Praise yet the gods for my days that have seen thee at last in my ending.
Fitly Troy may cease having gazed on thy beauty, 0 Helen."
He became silent, he ceased from words. But Paris and Helen
Lightly went forth and gladly; pursuing their footsteps the mother,
Mother once of Troilus, mother once of Hector,
Stood at the door with her death in her eyes, nor returned from her yearning,
But as one after a vanishing sunbeam gazes in prison,
Gazed down the corridors after him, long who had passed from her vision.

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Then in the silent chamber Cassandra seized by Apollo
Staggered erect and tossing her snow-white arms of affliction
Cried to the heavens in her pain; for the fierce god tortured her bosom:
"Woe is me, woe for the guile and the bitter gift of Apollo!
Woe, thrice woe, for my birth in Troy and the lineage of Teucer!
So do you deal, 0 gods, with those who have served you and laboured,
Those who have borne for your sake the evil burden of greatness.
Blessed is he who holds mattock in hand or who bends o'er the furrow
Taking no thought for the good of mankind, with no yearnings for knowledge.
Woe unto me for my wisdom which none shall value nor hearken!
Woe unto thee, 0 King, for thy strength which shall not deliver!
Better the eye that is sealed, more blest is the spirit that's feeble.
Vainly your hopes with iron Necessity struggle, 0 mortals.
Virtue shall lie in her pangs, for the gods have need of her torture;
Sin shall be scourged, though her deeds were compelled by the gods in their anger.
None shall avail in the end, the coward shall die and the hero.
Troy shall fall in her sin and her virtues shall not protect her;
Argos shall grow by her crimes till the gods shall destroy her for ever.
Now have I fruit of thy love, 0 Loxias, dreadful Apollo.
Woe is me, woe for the flame that approaches the house of my fathers!
Woe is me, woe for the hand of Ajax laid on my tresses!
Woe, thrice woe to him who shall ravish and him who shall cherish!
Woe for the ships that shall bound too swift o'er the azure Aegean!
Woe for thy splendid shambles of hell, 0 Argive Mycenae!
Woe for the evil spouse and house accursed of Atreus!"
So with her voice of the swan she clanged out doom on the peoples,
Over the palace of Priam and over the armed nation
Marching resolved to the war in the pride of its centuries conquered,
Centuries slain by a single day of the anger of heaven.
Dim to the thoughts like a vision of Hades the luminous chamber
Grew; in his ivory chair King Priam sat like a shadow
Throned mid the ghosts of departed kings and forgotten empires.
But in his valiance careless and blithe the Priamid hastened
Seeking the pillared megaron wide where Deiphobus armoured
Waited his coming forth with the warlike chiefs of the Trojans.
Now as he passed by the halls of the women, the chambers that harboured
Daughters and wives of King Priam and wives of his sons and their playmates,
Niches of joy that were peopled with murmurs and sweet-tongued laughters,

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Troubled like trees with their birds in a morning of sun and of shadow
Where in some garden of kings one walks with his heart in the sunshine,
Out from her door where she stood for him waiting Polyxena started,
Seized his hand and looked in his face and spoke to her brother.
Then not even the brilliant strength of Paris availed him;

Joyless he turned his face from her eyes of beauty and sorrow.
"So is it come, the hour that I feared, and thou goest, 0 Paris,
Armed with the strength of Fate to strike at my heart in the battle;
For he is doomed and thou and I, a victim to Hades.
This thou preferrest and neither thy father could move nor thy mother
Burning with Troy in their palace, nor could thy country persuade thee,
Nor dost thou care for thy sister's happiness pierced by thy arrows.
Will she remember it all, my sister Helen, in Argos
Passing tranquil days with her husband, bright Menelaus,
Holding her child on her knees? But we shall lie joyless in Hades."
Paris replied: "0 my sister Polyxena, blame me not wholly.
We by the gods are ensnared; for the pitiless white Aphrodite
Doing her will with us both compels this. Helpless our hearts are
And when she drives perforce must love, for death or for gladness:
Weighed in unequal scales she deals them to one or another.
Happy who holding his love can go down into bottomless Hades."
But to her brother replied in her anguish the daughter of Priam:
"Evilly deal with thy days the immortals happy in heaven;
Yes, I accuse the gods and I curse them who heed not our sorrow.
This they have done with me, forcing my heart to the love of a foeman,
One whose terrible hands have been stained with the blood of my brothers,
This now they do, they have taken the two whom I love beyond heaven,
Brother and husband, and drive to the fight to be slain by each other.
Nay, go thou forth; for thou canst not help it, nor I, nor can Helen.
Since I must die as a pageant to satisfy Zeus and his daughter,
Since now my heart must be borne as a victim bleeding to please them,
So let it be, let me deck myself and be bright for the altar."
Into her chamber she turned with her great eyes blind, unregarding;
He for a moment stood, then passed to the megaron slowly;
Dim was the light in his eyes and clouded his glorious beauty.
Meanwhile armed in the palace of Priam Penthesilea.
Near her her captains silent and mighty stood, from the Orient
Distant clouds of war, Surabdas and iron Surenas,
Pharatus planned like the hills, Somaranes, Valarus, Tauron,
High-crested Sumalus, Arithon, Sambas and Artavoruxes.

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There too the princes of Phrygian Troya gathered for counsel
And with them Eurus came, Polydamas' son, who most dearly
Loved was of all the Trojan boys by the glorious virgin.
She from her arming stayed to caress his curls and to chide him:
"Eurus, forgotten of grace, dost thou gad like a stray in the city
Eager to mix with the armoured men and the chariots gliding?
High on the roofs wouldst thou watch the swaying speck that is battle?
Better to aim with the dart or seek with thy kind the palaestra;
So wilt thou sooner be part of this greatness rather than straining
Yearn from afar to the distance that veils the deeds of the mighty."
But with an anxious lure in his smile on her Eurus answered:
"Not that remoteness to see have I come to the palace of Priam
Leaving the house of my fathers, but for the spear and the breast-piece.
Hast thou not promised me, long I shall fight in thy car with Achilles?"
Doubtful he eyed her, a lion's cub at play in his beauty,
And mid the heroes who heard him laughter arose for a moment,
Yet with a sympathy stirred; they remembered the days of their childhood,
Thinking¹ of Troy still mighty, life in its rose-touched dawning
When they had longed for the clash of the fight and the burden of armour.
Glad, with the pride of the lioness watching her cub in the desert, -
Couchant she lies with her paws before her and joys in his gambols,
Over the prey as he frisks and is careless, - answered the virgin:
"Younger than thou in my nation have mounted the steed and the war-car.
Eurus, arm; from under my shield thou shalt gaze at the Phthian,
Reaching my shafts for the cast from the rim of my car in the battle
Handle perhaps the spear that shall smite down the Phthian Achilles.
What sayst thou, Halamus? Were not such prowess a perfect beginning
Worthy Polydamas' son and the warlike house of Antenor?"
Halamus started and smiting his hand on the grief of his bosom
Sombre replied and threatened with Fate the high-hearted virgin.
"Virgin armipotent, wherefore mockst thou thy friend, though unwitting?
Nay, - for the world will know at the end and my death cannot hide it, -
Slain by a father's curse we fight who are kin to Antenor.
Take not the boy in thy car, lest the Furies, Penthesilea,
Aim through the shield and the shielder to wreak the curse of the grandsire.
They will not turn nor repent for thy strength nor his delicate beauty."
Swiftly to Halamus answered the high-crested strength of the virgin:
"Curses leave lightly the lips when the soul of a man is in anger
Even as blessings easily crowd round the head that is cherished.

¹Thought

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Yet have I never seen that a curse has sharpened a spear-point;
Never Death has drawn¹ back from the doomed by the power of a blessing.
Valour and skill and chance are Fate and the gods and the Furies.
Give me the boy; a hero shall come back formed from the onset."
"Do as thou wilt," replied Halamus, "Fate shall guard or shall end him."
Then to the boy delighted and smiling-eyed and exultant
Cried with her voice like the call of heaven's bugles Penthesilea:²
"Go, find the spear, gird the sword, don the cuirass, child of the mighty.
Armed when thou standest on the plain of the Xanthus, field of thy fathers,
See that thou fight on this day like the comrade of Penthesilea.
Bud of a hero, gaze unalarmed in the eyes of Achilles."
Light as a hound released he ran to the hall of the armour
Where were the shields of the mighty, the arms of the mansion of Teucer;
There from the house-thralls he wrung the greaves and the cuirass and helmet
Troilus wore, the wonderful boy who, ere ripened his prowess,
Conquered the Greeks and drove to the ships and fought with Achilles.
These on his boyish limbs he donned and ran back exulting
Bearing spears and a sword and rejoiced in the clank on his armour.
Meanwhile Deiphobus, head of the mellay, moved by Aeneas
Opened the doors of their warlike debate to the strength of the virgin:
"Well do I hope that our courage outwearying every opponent
Triumph shall lift to her ancient seat on the Pergaman turrets;
Clouds from Zeus come and pass; his sunshine eternal survives them.
Yet we are few in the fight and armoured nations besiege us.
Surging on Troy today a numberless foe well-captained
Hardly pushed back in shock after shock with the Myrmidon numbers
Swelled returns; they fight with a hope that broken refashion
Helpful skies and a man now leads them who conquers and slaughters,
One of the sons of the gods and armed by the gods for the struggle.
We unhelped save by Ares stern and the mystic Apollo
And but as mortals striving with stubborn mortal courage,
Hated and scorned and alone in the world by the nations rejected,
Fight with the gods and mankind and Achilles and numbers against us,
Keeping our country from death in this bitter hour of her fortunes.
Therefore have prudence and hardihood severed contending our counsels
Whether far out to fight on the seaward plain with the Argives
Or behind Xanthus the river impetuous friendly to Troya.
¹drew

²Cried with her voice like the call of heaven's bugles waking the heroes,
Blown by the lips of gold-haired Valkyries, Penthesilea:

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This my brother approves and the son of Antenor advises.
Prudent masters of war who prepare by defence their aggression.
But for myself from rashness I seek a more far-seeing wisdom,
Not behind vain defences choosing a tardy destruction,
Rather as Zeus with his spear of the lightning and chariot of tempest
Scatters and chases the heavy mass of the clouds through the heavens,
So would I hunt the Greeks through the plains to their lair by the Ocean,
Straight at the throat of my foeman so would I leap in the battle.
Swiftly to smite at the foe is prudence for armies outnumbered."
Then to the Dardanid answered the high-crested Penthesilea:
"There where I find my foe I will fight him, whether by Xanthus
Or at the fosse of the ships where they crouch behind bulwarks for shelter,
Or if they dare by Scamander the higher marching on Troya."
Sternly approved her the Trojan, "So should they fight who would triumph
Meeting the foe ere he moves in his will to the clash of encounter."
But with his careless laughter the brilliant Priamid Paris:
"Joy of the battle, joy of the tempest, joy of the gamble
Mated are in thy blood, 0 virgin, daughter of Ares,
Thou like the deathless wouldst have us combat, us who are human?
Come, let the gods do their will with us, Ares let lead and his daughter!
Always the blood is wiser and knows what is hid from the thinker.
Life and treasure and fame to cast on the wings of a moment,
Fiercer joy than this the gods have not given to mortals."
Highly to Paris answered the virgin armipotent Penthesilea,
"Paris and Halamus, shafts of the war-god, fear not for Troya.
Not as a vaunt do I speak it, you gods who stern-thoughted watch us,
But in my vision of strength and the soul that is seated within me,
Not while I live and war, shall the host of the Myrmidon fighters
Forcing the currents, lave as once they were wont, in Scamander
Vaunting their victor car-wheels red with the blood of the vanquished.
Then when I lie by some war-god slain on the fields of the Troad,
Fight again if you will behind high-banked fast-flowing Xanthus."
Halamus answered her, "Never so by my will would I battle
Flinging Troy as a stake on the doubtful diceboard of Ares.
But you have willed it and so let it be; yet hearken my counsel.
Massed in the fight let us aim the storm of our spears at one greatness,
Mighty Pelides' head who gives victory still to the Argives.
Easy the Greeks to destroy if Achilles once slain on the Troad,
But if the Peleid lives the fire shall yet finish with Troya.
Join then Orestes' speed to the stubborn might of Aeneas,

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Paris' fatal shafts and the missiles of Penthesilea.
Others meanwhile a puissant screen of our bravest and strongest
Fighting shall hold back Pylos and Argolis, Crete and the Locrian.
Thou, Deiphobus, front the bronze-clad stem Diomedes,
I with Polydamas' spear will dare to restrain and discourage
Ajax' feet though they yearn for pursuit and are hungry for swiftness;
Knot of retreat behind let some strong experienced captain
Stand with our younger levies guarding the fords of the Xanthus,
Fortify the wavering line and dawn as fresh strength on the wearied.
Then if the fierce gods prevail we shall perish not driven like cattle
Over the plains, but draw back sternly and slowly to Troya."
Answered the Priamid, "Wise is thy counsel, branch of Antenor.
Chaff are the southern Achaians, only the hardihood Hellene,
Only the savage speed of the Locrian rescues their legions.
Marshal we so the field. Stand, Halamus, covering Xanthus,
Helping our need when the foe press hard on the Ilian fighters.
Paris, my brother, thou with our masses aid the Eoan.
I with Aeneas' single spear am enough for the Argive."
"Gladlier," Halamus cried, "would I fight in the front with the Locrian!
This too let be as you will; for one is the glory and service
Fighting in front or guarding behind the fate of our country."
So in their thoughts they ordered battle. Meanwhile Eurus
Gleaming returned and the room grew glad with the light of his armour.
Glad were its conscious walls of that vision of boyhood and valour;
Gods of the household sighed and smiled at his courage and beauty,
They who had seen so many pass over their floors and return not
Hasting to battle, the fair and mighty, the curled and the grizzled,
All of them treading one path like the conscious masks of one pageant
Winding past through the glare of a light to the shadows¹ beyond them.
But on her captains proudly smiling Penthesilea
Seized him and cried aloud, her wild and warlike nature
Moved by the mother's heart that the woman loses not ever.
"Who then shall fear for the fate of Troy when such are her children?
Verily, Eurus, yearning has seized me to meet thee in battle
Rather than Locrian Ajax, rather than Phthian Achilles.
There acquiring a deathless fame I would make thee my captive,
Greedy and glad who feel as a lioness eyeing her booty.
Nay, I can never leave thee behind, my delicate Trojan,
But, when this war ends, will bear thee away to the hills of my country

¹darkness

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And, as a robber might, with my captive glad and unwilling
Bring thee a perfect gift to my sisters Ditis and Anna.
Eurus, there in my land thou shalt look on such hills as thy vision
Gazed not on yet, with their craggy tops besieging Cronion,
Sheeted in virgin white and chilling his feet with their vastness.
Thou shalt rejoice in our wooded peaks and our fruit-bearing valleys,
Lakes of Elysium dreaming and wide and rivers of wonder.
All day long thou shalt glide between mystic woodlands in silence
Broken only by call of the birds and the plashing of waters.
There shalt thou see, 0 Eums, the childhood of Penthesilea,
There shalt repose in my father's house and walk in the gardens
Green where I played at the ball with my sisters Ditis and Anna."
Musing she ceased, but if any god had touched her with prescience
Bidding her think for the last time now of the haunts of her childhood
Gazing in her soul with a parting love at the thought of her sisters
And of the lovely and distant land where she played through her summers,
Brief was the touch; for she changed at once and only of triumph
Dreamed and only yearned in her heart for the shock of Achilles.
So they passed from the halls of Priam fated and lofty,
Halls where the air seemed sobbing yet with the cry of Cassandra;
Clad in their brilliant armour, bright in their beauty and courage,
Sons of the passing demigods, they to their latest battle
Down the ancestral hill of the Pergamans, moved to the gateway
Loud with an endless march, with a tireless gliding to meet them
All Troy streamed from her streets and her palaces armed for the combat;
Then to the voice of Deiphobus clanging high o'er the rumour
Wide the portals swung that shall close on blood-red evening,
Slow, foreboding, reluctant, and through the yawn of the gateway
Drove with a cry her steeds the virgin Penthesilea
Calling aloud, "0 steeds of my east, we drive to Achilles."
Blithe in the car behind her Eurus scouted around him
Scared with his eyes lest Antenor his grandsire should rise in the gateway,
Hardly believing his fate that led him safe through the portals.
After her trampled and crashed the ranks of her orient fighters.
Paris next with his hosts came brilliant, gold on his armour,
Gold on his helm; a mighty bow hung slack on his shoulder,
Propped o'er his arm a spear, as he drove his car through the gateway.
Next Deiphobus drove and the hero strong Aeneas,
Leading their numbers on. Behind them Dus and Polites,

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Helenus, Priam's son, Thrasymachus, grizzled Aretes,
Came like the tempest his father, Aiamos, son of the Northwind -
Orus old in the battle¹ and Eumachus, kin to Aeneas,
Who was Creüsa's brother and richest of men in the Troad
After Antenor only and Priam, Ilion's monarch.
Halamus drove and Corecbus² led on his Lycian levies.
Who were the last to speed out of Troya of all those legions
Doomed to the sword? for never again from the ancient city
Foot would march or chariots crash in their pride to the Xanthus.
Aetor the old and Tryas the conqueror known by the Oxus,
They in the portals met and their ancient eyes on each other
Looked amazed, admiring on age the harness of battle.
They in the turreted head of the gateway talked and conversed.
"Twenty years have passed, O Tryas, chief of the Trojans,
Since in the battle thy car was seen and the arm of thy prowess
Age has wronged. Why now to the crowded ways of the battle
Move once more thy body infirm and thy eyes that are faded ?"
And to Antenor's brother the Teucrian, "Thou too, O Aetor,
Old and weary hast sat in thy halls and desisted from battle.
Now in Troy's portals I meet thee driving forth to the mellay."
Aetor answered, "Which then is better, to wretchedly perish
Crushed by the stones of my falling house or slain like a victim
Dragged through the blood of my kin on the sacred hearth of my fathers,
Or in the battle to cease mid the war-shouting hynm of chariots
Knowing that Troy yet stands in her pride though doomed in her morrows ?
So have the young men willed and the old like thee who age not,
Old are thy limbs, but thy heart still young and hot for the war-din."
Tryas replied: "To perish is better for man or for nation
Nobly in battle, nor end disgraced by disease or subjection.
So have I come here to offer this shoulder Laomedon leaned on,
Arms that have fought by the Oxus and conquered the Orient's heroes
Famous in Priam's wars, and a heart that is faithful to Troya.
These I will offer to death on his splendid altar of battle,
Tribute from Ilion. If she must fall, I shall see not her ending."
Aetor replied to Tryas: "Then let us perish together,
Joined by the love of our race who in life were divided in counsel.
All things embrace in death and the strife and the hatred are ended."
Silent together they drove for the last time through Ilion's portals
Out with the rest to the fight towards the sea and the spears of the Argives.

¹fight ²Arintheus

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Only once from their speed(as they drove) they gazed back silent on Troya
Lifting her marble pride in the golden joy of the morning.
So through the ripening morn the army, crossing Scamander,
Filling the heavens with the dust and the war-cry, marched on the Argives.
Far in front Troy's plain spread wide to the echoing Ocean.

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BOOK FIVE

The Book of Achilles

Meanwhile grey from the Trojan gates Talthybius journeyed,
Spurred by the secret thought of the Fates who change not nor falter.
Simois sighed round his wheels and Xanthus roared at his passing,
Troas' god like a lion wroth and afraid; to meet him
Whistling the ocean breezes came and Ida regarded.
So with his haste in his wheels the herald oceanward driving
Came through the gold of the morn o'er the trampled green of the pastures
Back to the ships and the roar of the sea and the iron-hooped leaguer.
Wide to the left his circle he wrote where the tents of Achilles
Trooped like a flock of the sea-fowl pensive and still on the margin.
He past the outposts rapidly coursed to the fosse¹ of the Argives.
In with a quavering cry to the encampment over the causeway
Bridging the moat of the ships Talthybius drove in his chariot
Out of the wide plains azure-roofed and the silence of Nature
Passing in to the murmur of men and the thick of the leaguer.
There to a thrall of the Hellene he cast his reins and with labour
Down from the high seat climbed of the war-car framed for the mighty.
Then betwixt tent-doors endless, vistaed streets of the canvas,
Slowly the old man toiled with his eager heart, and to meet him
Sauntering forth from his tent at the sound of the driving car-wheels
Strong Automedon came who was charioteer of Achilles.
"Grey Talthybius, whence art thou coming From Troya the ancient?
Or from a distant tent was thy speed and the King Agamemnon?
What in their armoured assembly counsel the Kings² of the Argives?"
"Not from the host but from Troy, Automedon, come I with tidings,
Nor have I mixed with the Greeks in their cohorts ranked by the Ocean,
Nor have I stood in their tents who are kings in sceptred Achaia,
But from Achilles sent to Achilles I bring back the message.
Tell me, then, what does Pelides, - whether his strength he reposes
Soothed by the lyre or hearing the chanted deeds of the mighty,
Or does he walk as he loves by the shore of the far-sounding waters ?"
And to the Argive herald grey Automedon answered:
"Now from the meal he rests and Briseis lyres to him singing
One of the Ilian chants of old in the tongue of the Trojans."
"Early then he has eaten, Automedon, early reposes ?"

¹moat ²chiefs

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"Early the meat was broached on the spits, Talthybius, early
High on the sands or under the tents we have eaten and rested.
None knows the hour of the hunt red, fierce nor the prey he shall leap on,
All are like straining hounds; for Achilles shares not his counsels,
But on the ships, in the tents the talk has run like Peneus;
These upon Troy to be loosed and the hard-fighting wolf-brood of Priam,
These hope starkly with Argos embraced, to have done with the Spartan,
Ending his brilliance in blood, to sport on the sands of the margent
Playing at bowls with the heads of the Cretan and crafty Odysseus.
Welcome were either or both; we shall move in the dances of Ares,
Quicken heart-beats dulled and limbs that are numb with reposing.
War we desire and no longer this ease by the drone of the waters."
So as they spoke, they beheld far-off the tent of Achilles,
Splendid and spacious even as the hall of a high-crested chieftain,
Lofty, held by a hundred stakes to the Phrygian meadow.
Hung were its sides with memories bronze and trophies of armour,
Sword and spear and helmet and cuirass of fallen heroes
Slain by the hand of mighty Achilles warring with Troya.
Teemed in its canvas rooms the plundered riches of Troas,
Craftsman's work and the wood well-carved and the ivory painted,
Work of bronze and work of gold and the dreams of the artist.
And in those tents of his pride, in the dreadful guard of the Hellene,
Nobler boys and daughters of high-born Pbrygians captive,
Borne from the joyless ruins that now were the sites of their childhood,
Served in the land of their sires the will of the Phthian Achilles.
There on a couch reclined in his beauty mighty and golden,
Loved by the Fates and doomed by them, spear of their will against Troya,
Peleus' hero son by the foam-white child of the waters
Dreaming reposed and his death-giving hand hung lax o'er the couch-side.
Near him dark-eyed Briseis, the fatal and beautiful captive,
Sung to the Grecian victor chants of the land of her fathers,
Sang the chant of Ilus, the tale of the glories of Troya.
Trojan boys and maidens sat near the singer and listened
Heart-delighted if with some tears; for easy are mortal
Hearts to be bent by Fate and soon we consent to our fortunes.
But in the doorway Automedon stood with the shadowy Argive
And at the ominous coming the voice of the singer faltered,
Faltering hushed like a thought melodious ceasing in heaven.
But from his couch the Peleid sprang to action, rejoicing,
Gladly delivered from patience long and he cried to the herald:

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"Long hast thou lingered in Ilion, envoy, mute in the chambers
Golden of Priam old; while around thee darkened the counsels
Wavering blindly and fiercely of minds that revolt from compulsion,
Natures at war with the gods and their fortunes. Fain would I fathom
Whatever the thoughts of Deiphobus locked in that nature of iron
Now that he stands confronting his fate in the town of his fathers.
Peace dwells not in thy aspect. Sowst thou a seed then of ruin
Cast from the inflexible heart and the faltering tongue of Aeneas
Or with the golden laugh of the tameless bright Alexander?"
Grey Talthybius answered: "Surely their doom has embraced them
Wrapping her locks round their ears and their eyes, lest they see and escape her,
Kissing their tongue with her fatal lips and dictating its answers.
Dire is the hope of their chiefs and fierce is the will of their commons.
'Son of the Aeacids, spurned is thy offer. The pride of thy challenge
Rather we choose; it is nearer to Dardanus, King of the Hellenes.
Neither shall Helen captive be dragged to the feet of her husband,
Nor down the paths of peace revisit her fathers' Eurotas.
Death and the fire may prevail on us, never our wills shall surrender
Lowering Priam's heights and darkening Ilion's splendours;
Not of such sires were we born, but of kings and of gods. Larissan,
Not with her gold Troy purchases safety but with her spear-point.
Stand with thy oath in the war-front, Achilles, call on thy helpers
Armed to descend from the calm of Olympian heights to thy succour,
Hedging thy fame from defeat; for we all desire thee in battle,
Mighty to end thee or tame at last by the floods of the Xanthus.'
So they reply; they are true to their death, they are constant for ruin.
Humbler answer hope not, O hero, from Penthesilea;
Insolent, warlike, regal and swift as herself is her message:
'Sea of renown and of valour that fillest the world with thy rumour,
Speed of the battle incarnate, mortal image of Ares!
Terror and tawny delight like a lion one hunts or is hunted!
Dread of the world and my target, swift-footed glorious hero!
Thus have I imaged thee, son of Peleus, dreaming in countries
Far from thy knowledge, in mountains that never have rung to thy war-cry.
0, I have longed for thee, warrior! Therefore today by thy message
So was I seized with delight that my heart was hurt with its rapture,
Knowing today I shall gaze with my eyes on that which I imaged
Only in air of the mind or met in the paths of my dreaming.
Thus have I praised thee first with my speech; with my spear I would answer.

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Yet for thy haughty scorn who deeming of me as some Hellene
Or as a woman weak of these plains fit but for the distaff,
Promisest capture in war and fame as thy slave-girl in Phthia, -
Surely I think that death today will reply to that promise, -
Now I will give thee my answer and warn thee ere we encounter.
Know me queen of a race that never was conquered in battle!
Know me armed with a spear that never has missed in the combat!
There where my car-wheels run, good fruit gets the husbandman after.
This thou knowest. Ajax has told thee, thy friend, in his dying.
Has not Meriones' spirit come in thy dreams then to warn thee?
Didst thou not number the Argives over ere I came to the battle?
Number them now and measure the warrior Penthesilea.
Such am I then whom thy dreams have seen meek-browed in Larissa,
And in the battle behind me thunder the heroes Eoan,
Ranks whose feeblest can match with the vaunted chiefs of the Argives.
Never yet from the shock have they fled; if they turn from the foeman,
Always 'tis to return like death recircling on mortals.
Yet being such, having such for my armies, this do I promise:
I on the left of the Trojans war with my bright-armed numbers,
Thou on the Argive right come forth, Achilles, and meet me!
If thou canst drive us with rout into Troy, I will own thee for master,
Do thy utmost will and make thee more glorious than gods are,
Serving thy couch in Phthia and drawing the jar from thy rivers.
Nay, if thou hast that strength, then hunt me, 0 hunter, and seize me,
If 'tis thy hope indeed that the sun can turn back from the Orient.
But if thou canst not, death of myself or thyself thou shalt capture."
Musing heard and was silent a while the strength of Achilles,
Musing of Fate and the wills of men and the purpose of Heaven,
Then from his thoughts he broke and turned in his soul towards battle.
"Well did I know what reply would come winged from the princes of Troya.
Prone are the hearts of heroes to wrath and to god-given blindness
When from their will they are thrust and harried by Fate and disaster:
Fierceness then is the armour of strength against grief and its yieldings.
So have the gods made man for their purpose, cunningly fashioned.
Once had defiance waked from my depths a Fury far-striding
Flaming for justice and vengeance, nor had it, satisfied, rested,
Sunk to its lair till the insulter died torn or was kneeling for pardon.
Fierce was my heart in my youth and exulted in triumph and slaughter.
Now as I grow in my spirit like to my kin the immortals,
Joy more I find in saving and cherishing than in the carnage.

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Greater it seems to my mind to be king over men than their slayer,
Nobler to build and to govern than what the ages have laboured
Putting their godhead forth to create or the high gods have fashioned,
That to destroy in our wrath of a moment. Ripened, more widely
Opens my heart to the valour of man and the beauty of woman,
Works of the world and delight; the cup of my victory sweetens
Not with the joys of hate, but the human pride of the triumph.
Yet was the battle decreed for the means supreme of the mortal
Placed in a world where all things strive from the worm to the Titan.
So will I seize by the onset what peace from my soul would sequester,
So will I woo with the sword and with love the delight of my foeman,
Troy and Polyxena. beauty of Paris and glory of Priam.
This was the ancient wrestling, this was the spirit of warfare
Fit for the demigods. Soon in the city of gold and of marble,
There where Ilus sat and Tros, where Laomedon triumphed,
Peleus' house shall reign, the Hellene sit where the Trojan
Thought himself deathless. Arise, Automedon! Out to the people!
Send forth the cry through the ships and the tents of the Myrmidon nation.
Let not a man be found then lingering when o'er the causeway
Thunder my chariot-wheels, nor let any give back in the battle,
Good if he wills from me, till through the conquered gates of the foeman
Storming we herd in their remnants and press into Troy as with evening
Helios rushing sinks to the sea. But thou, Briseis,
Put by thy lyre, 0 girl; it shall gladden my heart in my triumph
Victor returned from Troy to listen pleased to thy singing,
Bearing a captive bound to my car-wheels Penthesilea,
Bearing my valour's reward, Polyxena, daughter of Priam,
Won in despite of her city and brothers and spears of her kindred.
So by force it is best to take one's will and be mighty."
Joyful, Automedon ran through the drowsy camp of the Hellenes
Changing the hum of the tents as he raced into shoutings of battle;
For with the giant din of a nation triumphant arising
Hellas sprang from her irksome ease and mounted her war-car;
Donning her armour bright she rejoiced in the trumpet of battle.
But to the herald grey the Peleid turned and the old man
Shuddered under his gaze and shrank from the voice of the hero:
"Thou to the tents of thy kings, Talthybius, herald of Argos!
Stand in the Argive assembly, voice of the strength of Achilles.
Care not at all though the greatest and fiercest be wroth with thy message.
Deem not thyself, old man, as a body and flesh that is mortal,

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Rather as living speech from the iron breast of the Hellene.
Thus shalt thou chide the vanquished chiefs who have fled from a woman
Thus shalt thou speak my will to the brittle and fugitive legions: -
Now Achilles turns towards Troya and fast-flowing Xanthus,
Now he leaps at the iron zone, the impregnable city.
Two were the Forms of the Gods that o'erhung the sails of Pelides
When with a doubtful word in his soul he came wind-helped from Hellas
Cleaving the Aegean deep towards the pine-crested vision of Ida.
Two are the Fates that stride with the hero counting his exploits.
Over all earthly things the soul that is fearless is master,
Only on death he can reckon not whether it comes in the midnight
Treading the couch of Kings in their pride or speeds in the spear-shaft.
Now will I weigh down that double beam of the Olympian balance
Claiming one of the equal Fates that stand robed for the fighter,
For to my last dire wrestle I go with the Archer of heaven,
And ere the morning gleam have awakened the eagles on Ida,
Troy shall lie prone¹ or earth shall be empty of Phthian Achilles.
But for whatever Fate I accept from the ageless Immortals,
Whether cold Hades dim or Indus waits for my coming
Pouring down vast to the sea with the noise of his numberless waters,
I with Zeus am enough. Your mortal aid I desire not,
Rushing to Troy like the eagle of Zeus when he flies towards the thunders, -
Winged with might, the bird of the spaces, upbuoying his pinions.
Nor shall my spirit look back for the surge of your Danaan fighters,
Tramp of the Argive multitudes helping my lonely courage,
Neither the transient swell of the cry Achaian behind me
Seek, nor the far-spreading voice of Atrides guiding his legions.
Need has he none for a leader who himself is the soul of his action.
Zeus and his Fate and his spear are enough for the Phthian Achilles.
Rest, 0 wearied hosts; my arm shall win for you Troya,
Quelled when the stern Eoans break and Penthesilea
Lies like a flower in the dust at my feet. Yet if Ares desire you,
Come then and meet him once more mid the cry and the trampling! Assemble
Round the accustomed chiefs, round the old victorious wrestlers
Wearied strengths Deiphobus leaves you or sternest Aeneas.
But when my arm and my Fate have vanquished their gods and Apollo,
Brilliant with blood when we stand amid Ilion's marble splendours,
Then let none seat deaf flame on the glory of Phrygia's marbles
Or with his barbarous rapine shatter the chambers of sweetness

¹stoop low

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Slaying the work of the gods and the beauty the ages have lived for.
For he shall moan in the night remote from the earth and her greenness,
Spurred like a steed to its goal by my spear dug deep in his bosom;
Fast he shall fleet to the waters of wailing, the pleasureless pastures.
Touch not the city Apollo built, where Poseidon has laboured.
Seized and dishelmed and disgirdled of Apollonian ramparts,
Empty of wide-rolling wheels and the tramp of a turbulent people
Troy with her marble domes shall live for our nations in beauty
Hushed mid the trees and the corn and the pictured halls of the ancients,
Watching her image of dreams in the gliding waves of Scamander,
Sacred and still, a city of memory spared by the Grecians.¹

So shalt thou warn the arrogant hearts of Achaia's chieftains
Lest upon Greece an evil should fall and her princes should perish.
Herald, beware how thou soften my speech in the ears of thy nation
Sparing their pride and their hearts but dooming their lives to the death-stroke.
Even thy time-touched snows shall not shield thy days from my sword-edge."
Wroth grew the old man's heart, but he feared Achilles and slowly
Over the margin grey on the shore of the far-sounding Ocean
Silent paced to the tents of the Greeks and the Argive assembly.
There on the sands while the scream of the tide as it dragged at the pebbles
Strove in vain with their droning roar, awaiting their chieftains
Each in his tribe and his people far down the margin Aegean,
Argolis' sons and Epirote spears and the isles and the southron,
Locris' swarms and Messene's pikes and the strength of the Theban,
Hosts bright-armed, bright-eyed, bright-haired, time-hardened to Ares,
Stretched in harsh and brilliant lines with a glitter of spear-points
Far as the eye could toil. All Eufope helmeted, armoured
Swarmed upon Asia's coasts disgorged from their ships in their hundreds.
There in the wide-winged tent of the council that peered o'er the margin,
High where the grass and the meadow-bloom failed on the sand-rifted sward-edge,
Pouring his argent voice Epeus spoke to the princes,
Rapid in battle and speech; and even as boy in a courtyard
Tosses his ball in the air and changes his hands for the seizing,
So he played with his counsel and thought and rejoiced in his swiftness.
But now a nearing Fate he felt and his impulse was silenced.
Stilled were his thoughts by the message that speeds twixt our minds in their shadows

¹nobles

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Dumb, unthought, unphrased, to us dark, but the caverns of Nature
Hear its cry when God's moment changing our fate comes visored
Silently into our lives and the spirit too knows, for it watches.
Quiet he fell and all men turned to the face of the herald.
Mute and alone through the ranks of the seated and silent princes
Old Talthybius paced, nor paused till he stood at the midmost
Fronting that council of Kings and nearest to Locrian Ajax
And where Sthenelus sat and where sat the great Diomedes,
Chiefs of the South, but their love was small for the Kings of the Spartans.
There like one close to a refuge he lifted his high-chanting accents.
High was his voice like the wind's when it whistles shrill o'er a forest
Sole of all sounds at night, for the kite is at rest and the tiger
Sleeps from the hunt returned in the deepest hush of the jungle.
"Hearken, 0 Kings of the world, to the lonely will of the Phthian!
One is the roar of the lion heard by the jungle's hundreds,
One is the voice of the great and the many shall hear it inclining.
Lo, he has shaken his mane for the last great leap upon Troya
And when the eagle's scream shall arise in the dawn over Ida.
Troy shall have fallen or earth shall be empty of Phthian Achilles.
But by whatever Fate he is claimed that waits for the mortal,
Whether the fast-closed hands above have kept for his morrows
Chill of the joyless shades or earth and her wooings of sunlight
Still shall detain his days with the doubtful meed of our virtues,
He and Zeus shall provide, not mortals. Chaff are men's armies
Threshed by the flails of Fate; 'tis the soul of the hero that conquers.
Not on the tramp of the multitudes, not in the cry of the legions
Founds the strong man his strength but the god that he carries within him.
Zeus and his Fate and his spear are enough for the Phthian Achilles.
Prudence of men shall curb no more his god-given impulse.
He has no need of thy voice, 0 Atreus, guiding the legions,
He is the leader, he is the soul of magnificent emprise.
Rest, 0 ye sons of the Greeks,¹ the Phthian shall conquer for Hellas!
Rest! expose not your hearts to the war-cry of Penthesilea.
Yet if the strength in you thirsts for the war-din, if Ares is hungry,
Meet him stark in the mellay surging Deiphobus' coursers,
Guiding Aeneas' spear; recover the souls of your fathers.
Bronze must his heart be who looks in the eyes of the implacable war-god!
But when his Fate has conquered their gods and slaughtered their heroes,
And in this marble Ilion bowed²to the tread of her foemen

¹0 Greeks in your tents, ²forced

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Watched by the ancient domes you stand by the timeless turrets,
Then let no chieftain crowned¹ for offering lift against Troya,
Counselled of Ate, torch of the burning, hand of the plunder
Groping for gold but finding death in her opulent chambers.
For he shall moan in the night regretting the earth and her greenness,
Spurred by the spear in his arrogant breast like a steed to the gorges:
Fast he shall fleet to the flowerless meadows, the sorrowful pastures.
Touch not the city Apollo built, where Poseidon laboured,
Slay not the work of the gods and the glory the ages have lived for.
Mute of the voice of her children, void of the roll of her war-cars
Timeless Troy leave solitary dreaming by ancient Scamander
Sacred and still, a city of memory spared by the Grecians.”²

So Talthybius spoke and anger silenced the Argives.
Mute was the warlike assembly, silent Achaia's princes.
Wrath and counsel strove in the hush for the voice of the speakers.

¹garbed ²Phthian

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But from their midst uprearing a brow that no crown could ennoble,
Male and kingly of front like a lion conscious of puissance
Rose a form august, the monarch great Agamemnon.
Wroth he rose yet throwing a rein on the voice of his passion,
Governing the beast and the demon within by the god who is mighty.
"Happily for thy life and my fame that thou comst with the aegis of heaven
Shadowing thy hoary brows, thou herald of pride and of insult.
Well is it too for his days who sent thee that other and nobler
Heaven made my heart than his who insults and a voice of the immortals¹

Cries to my soul forbidding its passions. 0 hardness of virtue
Thus to be seized and controlled as in fetters by Zeus and Athene.
Free is the peasant to smite in the pastures the mouth that has wronged him,
Chained in his soul is Atrides. Bound by their debt to the fathers,
Curbed by the god in them painfully move the lives of the noble,
Forced to obey the eye that watches within in their bosoms.
Ever since Zeus Cronion turned in our will towards the waters,
Scourged by the heavens in my dearest, wronged by men and their clamours
Griefs untold I have borne in Argos and Aulis and Troas,
Yoked to the sacred toil of the Greeks for their children and country,
Bound by the gods to a task that is heavy, a load that is bitter.
Seeing the faces² of foes in the mask of a friend I was silent.
Hateful I hold him who sworn to a cause that is holy and common
Broods upon private wrongs or serving his³lonely ambition

¹ Alternative to lines 4-9:

Wroth he rose with a reddened brow as reddens the forehead
Wide of the heavens with a glory of wrath on the eve of a* tempest.
"Well is it, herald, that sacred thou comst with the aegis of heaven
Sheltering thy hoary brows; for thy age should not shield thee nor pardon.†
Shame to the ancient years and the Argive tongue that can utter
Words like these into Argive ears from the mouth of a Hellene.
Well is it too for the length of his days who sent thee, 0 envoy,
Voicing‡ his pride, the haughty§ chief of a barbarous nation,
One who imagines that sole upon earth he is brave and a fighter.
Well for his days that my strength is restrained by a voice that within me

*some

†Alternative: Well is it, herald, that sacred thou comst and protected of heaven,
Bearing this stab to Achaia nor fearest insulting her princes.
‡ Vioce of § insolent

²eyes ³lured by a

Page-472

Studies to reap his gain from the labour and woe of his fellows.
Mire is the man who hears not the gods when they cry to his bosom.
Grief and wrath I coerced nor carried my heart to its record,
All that has hurt its chords and wounded the wings of my spirit.
Nobler must kings be than natures of earth on whom Zeus lays no burden.
Other is Peleus' son than the race of his Aeacid fathers,
Nor like his sire of the wise-still heart deep-sighted and patient
Bearing the awful ruin of the gods, but hastes to his longings;
Dire is his wrath and pursued by the band of his giant ambitions.
Measure and virtue forsake him as Ate grows in his bosom.
Yet not for tyrant wrong nor to serve as a sword for our passions
Zeus created our strength, but that earth might have help from her children.
Not of our moulding its gifts to our soul nor were formed by our labour.
When did we make them, and where were they forged, in what workshop or furnace?¹

Found in what aeon of Time, that pride should bewilder the mortal?
Bowed to our will are the folk and our prowess dreadful and godlike?
Shadows are these of the gods which the deep heavens cast on our spirits.
Transient we made not ourselves, but at birth from the first we were fashioned
Valiant or fearful and as was our birth by the gods and their thinkings
Formed, so already enacted and fixed by their wills are our fortunes.
What were the strength of Atrides and what were the craft of Odysseus
Save for their triumphing gods? They would fail and be helpless as infants.
Stronger a woman, wiser a child were, favoured by Heaven.
Ceased not Sarpedon slain who was son of Zeus and unconquered?
Not to Achilles he fell, but Fate and the gods were his slayers.
Kings, to the arrogant shaft that was launched, the unbearable insult
Armoured wisdoms oppose, let not Ate seize on your passions.
Be not as common souls, 0 you who are Greece and her fortunes,
Nor of your spirits of wrath take counsel of Athene.
Merit the burden laid by Zeus, his demand from your natures
Suffer, 0 hearts of his seed, 0 souls who are chosen and mighty,
All forgetting but Greece and her good; resolve what is noble.
I will not speak nor advise, for 'tis known we are rivals and foemen."
Calmed by his words and his will he sat down mighty and kinglike;
Bul Menelaus arose, the Spartan, the husband of Helen,
Atreus' younger son from a lesser womb, in his brilliance
Dwarfed by the other's port, yet tall was he, gracile and splendid,
As if a panther might hunt by a lion's side in the forest.

¹of being?

Page-473

Smiting his thigh with his firm-clenched hand he spoke mid the Argives:
"Woe to me, shameless, born to my country a cause of affliction,
Since for my sake all wrongs must be borne and all shames be encountered;
And for my sake you have spun through the years down the grooves of disaster
Bearing the shocks of the Trojans and ravaged by Zeus and by Hector,
Slaughtered by Rhesus and Memnon, Sarpedon and Penthesilea
Or by the Archer pierced, the hostile dreadful Apollo,
Evilly end the days of the Greeks remote from their kindred-
Slain on an alien soil by Asian Xanthus and Ida.
Doomed to the pyre we have toiled for a woman ungracious who left us
Passing serenely my portals to joy in the chambers of Troya.
Here let it cease, 0 my brother! how much wilt thou bear for this graceless
Child of thy sire, cause still of thy griefs and never of blessing?
Easily Zeus afflicts who trouble their hearts for a woman;
But in our ships that sailed close-fraught with this dolorous Ate
Worse was the bane they bore which King Peleus begot on white Thetis.
Evil ever was sown by the embrace of the gods with a mortal!
Alien a portent is born and a breaker of men and their labours,
One who afflicts with his light or his force mortality's weakness
Stripping for falsehoods their verities, shaking the walls they erected.
Neither without him his fellows can prosper nor will his spirit
Fit in the frame of things earthly but shatters their rhythm and order
Rending the measures just that the wise have decreed for our growing.
So have our mortal plannings broken in this fateful Achilles
And with our blood and our anguish Heaven has fostered his greatness.
It is enough; let the dire gods choose between Greece and their offspring.
Even as he bids us, aloof let our hosts twixt the ships and the Xanthus
Stand from the shock and the cry where Hellene meets with Eoan.
Troy and Phthia locked, Achilles and Penthesilea,
Nor any more than watchers care who line an arena;
Calm like the impartial gods they approve the bravest and swiftest.
So let him fight! The fates shall preserve him he vaunts of or gather,
Even as death shall gather us all for memory's clusters,
All in their day who were great or were little, heroes or cowards.
So shall he slay or be slain, a boon to mankind and his country.
Since if he mow down this flower of bale, this sickle by Hades
Whirled if he break - for the high gods ride on the hiss of his spear-shaft, -
Ours is the gain who shall break rejoicing through obdurate portals
Praising Pallas alone and Hera daughter of Heaven.

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But if he sink in this last of his fights, as they say it is fated, -
Nor do I deem that the man has been born in Asia or Hellas
Who in the dreadful field can prevail against Penthesilea, -
If to their tents the Myrmidons fleeing cumber the meadows
Slain by a girl in her speed and leaving the corpse of their leader,
Ours is the gain, we are rid of a shame and a hate and a danger.
True is it, Troy shall exultant live on in the shadow of Ida,
Yet shall our hearts be light because earth is void of Achilles.
And for the rest of the infinite loss, what we hoped, what we suffered,
Let it all go, let the salt floods swallow it, fate and oblivion
Bury it out in the night; let us sail o'er the waves to our country
Leaving Helen in Troy since the gods are the friends of transgressors."
So Menelaus in anger and grief miscounselled the Argives.
Great Idomeneus next, the haughty king of the Cretans,
Raised his brow of pride in the lofty Argive assembly.
Tall like a pine that stands up on the slope of Thessaian mountains
Overpeering a cascade's edge and is seen from the valleys,
Such he seemed to their eyes who remembered Greece and her waters,
Heard in their souls the torrent's leap and the wind on the hill-top:
"Long¹ have I marvelled at heart² to behold in this levy of heroes
Armies so many, chieftains so warlike suffer in silence
Pride of a single man when he thunders and lightens in Troas.
Doubtless the nations that follow his cry are many and valiant,
Doubtless the winds of the north have made him a runner and spearman.
Shall not then force be the king? is not strength the seal of the godhead?
This my soul replies, 'Agamemnon the Atreid only
Choosing for leader and king I have come to the toil and the warfare.
Wisdom and greatness he owns and the wealth and renown of his fathers
But for this whelp of the northlands, nursling of rocks and the sea-cliff,
Who with his bleak and rough-hewn Myrmidons hastes to the carnage,
Leader of wolves to their prey, not the king of a humanised nation.
Not to such head of the cold-drifting mist and the gloom-vigilled Chaos,
Crude to our culture and light and void of our noble fulfilments
Minos shall bend his knee nor Crete, a barbarian's vassal,
Stain her old glories.' Oh, but he boasts of a goddess for mother
Born in the senseless seas mid the erring wastes of the Ocean³
Gods we adore enough in the heavens, and if from us Hades
Claim one more of this breed, we can bear that excess to her glories,
Not upon earth these new-born deities huge-passioned, sateless

¹Oft ²O Greeks ³White and swift and foam-footed, vast Oceanus' daughter!

Page-475

Who with their mouth as of Orcus and stride of the ruinous Ocean
Sole would be seen mid her sons and devour all life's joy and its greatness.
Millions must empty their lives that a few men may o'ershadow the nations,
Numberless homes must weep but their hunger of glory is sated!
Troy shall descend to the shadow; gods and men have condemned her,
Weary, hating her fame. Her dreams, her grandeur, her beauty,
All her greatness and deeds that now end in miserable ashes,
Ceasing shall fade and be as a tale that was forged by the poets.
Only a name shall go down from her past and the woe of her ending
Naked to hatred and rapine and punished with rape and with slaughter.
Never again must her marble pride high-crowned on her hill-top
Look forth dominion and menace over the crested Aegean
Shadowing¹ Achaia. Fire shall abolish the fame of her ramparts,
Earth her foundations forget. Shall she stand then affronting the azure?
Dire in our path like a lioness once again must we meet her
Leap and roar of her led by the spear of Achilles, not Hector!
Asia by Peleus guided² shall stride on us after Antenor?
"Though one should plan in the night of his thoughts where no eye can pursue him,
Instincts of men discover their foe and like hounds in the darkness
Bay at a danger hid. No silence of servitude trembling
Trains to bondage sons of the race of whom Aeolus father
Storm-voiced was and free, nor like other groupings of mortals
Moulded we were by Zeus, but supremely were sifted and fashioned;
Other are Danaus' son and other the lofty Achaians:
Chainless like Nature's tribes in their many-voiced colonies founded
They their god-given impulse shall keep and their natures of freedom.
Only themselves shall rule them, only their equal spirits
Bowed to the voice of a law that is just, obeying their leaders
Awed by the gods. So with order and balance and harmony noble
Life shall move golden, free in its steps and just in its measure,
Glad of a manhood complete, by excess and defect untormented.
Freedom is life to the Argive's soul, to Aeolia's peoples.
Dulled by a yoke our nations would perish, or live but as shadows,
Changed into phantoms of men with the name of a Greek for a byword.
Not like the East and her sons is our race, they who bow to a mortal.
Gods there may be in this flesh that suffers and dies; Achaia
Knows them not. Need if he feels of a world to endure and adore him,

¹Lessening / Stunting / Dwarfing ²prompted

Page-476

Hearts let him seek that are friends with the dust, overpowered by their heavens,
Here in these Asian vastnesses, here where the heats and the perfumes
Sicken the soul and the sense and a soil of indolent plenty
Breeds like the corn in its multitudes natures accustomed to thraldom.
Here let the northern Achilles seek for his slaves and adorers,
Not in the sea-ringed isles and not in the mountains Achaian.
Ten long years of the shock and the war-cry twixt rampart and ocean
Hurting our hearts we have toiled; shall they reap not their ease in the vengeance?
Troas is strewn¹ with the lives of our friends and with ashes remembered;
Shall not Meriones slain be reckoned in blood and in treasure?
Cretan Idomeneus girt with the strength of his iron retainers
Slaying and burning will stride through the city of music and pleasure,
Babes of her blood borne high on the spears at the head of my column,
Wives of her princes dragged through her streets in its pomp to their passion,
Gold of Troy stream richly past in the gaze of Achilles.
Then let him threaten my days, then let him rally the might of his trumpets,
Yet shall a Cretan spear make search in his heart for his godhead.
Limbs of this god can be pierced; not alone shall I fleet down to Hades."
After him rose from the throne the L'er² your griefs, lay a curb on your anger.
Moved man's tongue in its wrath looses speech that is hard to be pardoned,
Afterwards stilled we regret, we forgive. If all were resented,
None could live on this earth that is thick with our stumblings. Always
This is the burden of man that he acts from his heart and his passions,
Stung by the goad of the gods he hacks³ at the ties that are dearest.
Lust was the guide they sent us, wrath was a whip for his coursers,
Madness they made the heart's comrade, repentance they gave for its scourger.
This too our hearts demand that we bear with our friend when he chides us.
Insult forgive from the noble embittered soul of Achilles!
When with the scorn and the wrath of a lover our depths are tormented,
Who shall forbid the cry and who shall measure the anguish?
Sharper the pain that looses the taunt than theirs who endure it.
Rage has wept in my blood as I lived through the flight o'er the pastures,
Shame coils a snake in my back when thought whispers of Penthesilea.
Bright shine his morns if he mows down this hell-bitch armed by the Furies!
But for this shaft of his pity it came from a lesser Pelides,

¹sown ²on ³hews

Page-477

Not from the slayer of Hector, not from the doom of Sarpedon,
Memnon's mighty o'erthrower, the blood-stained splendid Achilles.
These are the Trojan snares and the fateful smile of a woman!
This thing the soul of a man shall not bear that blood of his labour
Vainly has brought him victory leaving life to the hated;
This is a wound to our race that a Greek should whisper of mercy.
Who can pardon a foe though a god should descend to persuade him?
Justice is first of the gods, but for Pity 'twas spawned by a mortal,
Pity that only disturbs God's measures and false and unrighteous
Holds man back from the joy he might win and troubles his bosom.
Troy has a debt to our hearts; she shall pay it all down to the obol,
Blood of the fall and anguish of flight when the heroes are slaughtered,
Days without joy while we labour and see not the eyes of our parents,
Toil of the war-cry, nights that drag past upon alien beaches,
Helen ravished, Paris triumphant, endless the items
Crowd on a wrath in the memory, kept as in bronze the credit
Stretches out long and blood-stained and savage. Most for the terror
Graved in the hearts of our fathers that still by our youth is remembered,
Hellas waiting and crouching, dreading the spear of the Trojan,
Flattering, sending gifts and pale in her mortal anguish,
Agony long of a race at the mercy of iron invaders,
This shall pay most, the city of pride, the insolent nation,
Pay with her temples charred and her golden mansions in ruins,
Pay with the shrieks of her ravished virgins, the groans of the aged
Burned in their burning homes for our holiday. Music and dancing
Shall be in Troy of another sort than she loved in her greatness,
Merry with conquered gold and insulting the world with her flutings.
All that she boasted of, statue and picture, all shall be shattered;
Out of our shame she chiselled them, rich with our blood they were coloured.
This not the gods from Olympus crowding, this not Achilles,
This not your will, 0 ye Greeks, shall deny to the Locrian Ajax.
Even though Pallas divine with her aegis counselling mercy
Cumbered my path I would push her aside to leap on my victims.
Learn shall all men on that day how a warrior deals with his foemen."
Darting flames from his eyes the barbarian sate and there rose up
Frowning Tydeus's son, the Tirynthian, strong Diomedes.
'Ajax Oileus, thy words are foam on the lips of a madman.
Cretan Idometeus, silence the vaunt that thy strength can fulfil not.
Strong art thou, fearless in battle, but not by thy spear-point, O hero,
Hector fell, nor Sarpedon, nor Troilus leading the war-cry.

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These were Achilles' deeds which a god might have done out of heaven.
Him we upbraid who saved, nor would any now who revile him
Still have a living tongue for ingratitude but for the hero.
Much to the man forgive who has saved his race and his country:
Him shall the termless centuries praise when we are forgotten.
Curb then your speech, crush down in your hearts the grief and the choler;
Has not Atrides curbed who is greatest of all in our nations
Wrath in the heart and the words that are winged for our bale from our bosoms?
For as a load be borne were these passions given to mortals.
HonourAchilles, conquer Troy by his god-given valour.
Now of our discords and griefs debate not for joy of our foemen!
First over Priam's corpse stand victors in Ilion's ramparts;
Discord then let arise or concord solder our nations."
Rugged words and few as fit for the soul that he harboured
Great Tydides spoke and ceased; and there rose up impatient
Tall mid the spears of the north the hero king Prothoënor,
Prince in Cadmeian Thebes who with Leitus led on his thousands:
"Loudly thou vauntest thy freedom Ionian Minos recalling:
Lord of thy southern isles who gildst with thy tribute. Mycenae!
We have not bowed our neck to Pelops' line or at Argos'
Iron heel have not crouched nor clasped like thy time-wearied nations,
Python-befriended, gripped in the coils of an iron protection,
Bondage soothed by a name and destruction masked as a helper.
We are the young and lofty and free-souled sons of the Northland.
Nobly Peleus, the Aeacid, seer of a vaster Achaia,
Pride and his strength and his deeds renouncing for joy of that vision,
Yielded his hoary right to the sapling stock of Atrides.
Noble, we gave to that nobleness freely our grandiose approval.
Not as a foe then, 0 King, who angered sharpens his arrows,
Fits his wrath and hate to the bow and aims at the heart-strings
But from the Truth that is seated within me compelling my accents,
Taught by my fathers stern not to lie nor to hide what I harbour,
Truth the goddess I speak, nor constrain the voice in my bosom.
Monarch, I own thee first of the Greeks save in valour and counsel,
Brave but less than Achilles, wise but not as Odysseus,
First still in greatness and calm and majesty. Yet, Agamemnon,
Love of thy house and thy tribe disfigures the king in thy nature;
Thou thy brother preferrest, thy friends and thy nation unjustly,
Even as a common man whose heart is untaught by Athene,

Page-479

Beastlike favours his brood forgetting the law of the noble.
Therefore Ajax grew wroth and Teucer sailing abandoned
Over the angry seas this stern fierce toil of the nations;
Therefore Achilles has turned in his soul and gazed towards the Orient.
Yet are we fixed in our truth like hills in heaven, Atrides;
Greece and her safety and good in our passions strive to remember.
Nor of this stamp was thy brother's speech; such words Lacedaemon
Hearing may praise in her kings; we speak not in Thebes what is shameful.
Shamefuller thoughts have never escaped from lips that were high-born.
We will not send forth earth's greatest to die in a friendless battle,
Nor will forsake the daughter of, Zeus and white glory of Hellas,
Helen the golden-haired Tyndarid, left for the joy of our foemen,
Chained to Paris' delight, earth's goddess the slave of the Phrygian,
Though Menelaus the Spartan abandon his wife to the Trojans
And from the field where he lavished the unvalued blood of his people
Flee to a hearth dishonoured. Not the Atreid's sullied grandeurs,
Greece to defend we have toiled through the summers and lingering autumns
Blind with our blood; for our country we bleed, repelling her foemen.
Dear is that loss to our veins and still that expense we would lavish,
Claiming its price from the heavens, though thou sail with thy brother and cohorts.
Weakling, flee! take thy southern ships, take thy Spartan levies,
Still will the Greeks fight on in the Troad helped by thy absence.
For though the beaches vast grow empty, the tents can be numbered
Standing friendless and few on the huge and hostile champaign,
Always a few will be left whom the threatenings of Fate cannot conquer,
Always earth has sons¹ whose courage waits not on fortune;
Hellas' heart will be firm confronting the threat of the victor,
Sthenelus war and Tydides, Odysseus and Locrian Ajax,
Thebes' unconquered sons and the hero chiefs of the northland.
Stern and persistent as Time or the seas and as deaf to affliction
We will clash on in the fight unsatisfied, fain of the war-cry,
Helped by the gods and our cause through the dawns and the blood-haunted evenings,
Rising in armour with morn and outstaying the red of the sunset,
Till in her ashes Troy forgets that she lusted for empire
Or in our own the honour and valour of Greece are extinguished."
So Prothoënor spoke nor pleased with his words Agamemnon;
But to the northern kings they were summer rain on the visage.

¹souls are born

Page-480

Last Laertes' son, the Ithacan, war-wise Odysseus,
Rose up wide-acclaimed; like an oak was he stunted in stature,
Broad-shouldered, firm-necked, lone and sufficient, as on some island
Regnant one peak whose genial streams flow down to the valley,
Dark on its slopes are the olives, the storms butt in vain at its shoulders, -
Such he stood and pressed the earth with his feet like one vanquished,
Striving, but held to his will. So Atlas might seem were he mortal,
Atlas whose vastness free from impatience suffers the heavens,
Suffering spares the earth, the thought-haunted motionless Titan,
Bearer of worlds. In those jarring tribes no man was his hater ;
For as the Master of all guides humanity, so this Odysseus
Dealt with men and helped and guided them, careful and selfless,
Crafty, tender and wise, - like the Master who bends o'er his creatures,
Suffers their sins and their errors and guides them screening his guidance;
Each through his nature He leads and the world by the lure of His wisdom.
"Princes of Argolis, chiefs of the Locrians, spears of the northland,
Warriors vowed to a sacred hate and a vengeance that's holy,
Sateless still is that hate, that vengeance cries for its victims,
Still is the altar unladen, the priest yet waits with the death-knife.
Who while the rites are unfinished, the gods unsatisfied, impious
Turns in his heart to the feuds of the house and his strife with his equals?
None will approve the evil that fell from the younger Atrides;
But it was anger and sorrow that spoke, it was not Menelaus.
Who would return from Troy and arrive with his war-wasted legions
Back to his home in populous city or orcharded island;
There from his ships disembarked look round upon eyes that grow joyless
Seeking a father or husband slain, a brother heart-treasured,
Mothers in tears for their children, and when he is asked, '0 our chieftain,
What dost thou bring back in place of our dead to fill hearts that are empty?'
Who then will say, 'I bring back my shame and the shame of my nation;
Troy yet stands confronting her skies and Helen in Troya ?'
Nor for such foil will I go back to Ithaca or to Laertes,
Rather far would I sail in my ships past southern Cythera,
Turning away in silence from waters where on some headland
Gazing south o'er the waves my father waits for my coming,
Leaving Sicily's shores and on through the pillars of Gades.
Far I would sail whence sound of me never should come to Achaia
Out into tossing worlds and weltering reaches of tempest
Dwarfing the swell of the wide-wayed Aegean, - oceans unbounded
Either by cliff or by sandy margin, only the heavens

Page-481

Ever receding before my keel as it ploughs on for ever
Frail and alone in a world of waves. Even there would I venture
Seeking some island unknown, not return with shame to my fathers.
Well might they wonder how souls like theirs begot us for their offspring.
Fighters^¹ war-afflicted, princes^² banded by heaven,
Wounds and defeat you have borne; bear too their errors who lead you.
Mortals are kings and have hearts; our leaders too have their passions.
Then if they err, yet still obey lest anarchy fostered,
Discord and deaf rebellion that speed like a poison through kingdoms,
Break all this army in pieces while Ate mocking at mortals
Trails to a shameful end this noble^³ essay of the nations.
Who among men has not thoughts that he holds for the wisest, though foolish?
Who, though feeble and nought, esteems not his strength o'er his fellow's?
Therefore the wisest and strongest choose out a king and a leader,
Not as a perfect arbiter armed with impossible virtues
Far o'er our heads and our ken like a god high-judging his creatures,
But as a man among men who is valiant, wise and far-seeing,
One of ourselves and the knot of our wills and the sword of our action.
Him they advise and obey and cover his errors with silence.
Not Agamemnon the Atreid. Greeks, we obey in this mortal;
Greece we obey; for she walks in his gait and commands by his gestures.
Evil he works then who loosens this living knot of Achaia.
Falling apart from his nation; who, wed to a solitary virtue,
Deeming he does but right, renounces the yoke of his fellows, -
Errs more than hearts of the mire that in blindness and weakness go stumbling.
Man when he, spurns his kind, when he equals himself with the deathless,
Even in his virtues sins and, erring, calls up Ate:
For among men we were born, not as wild beasts sole in a fastness.
Oft with a name are misled the passionate hearts of the noble;
Chasing highly some image of good they trample its substance.
Evil is worked, not justice, when into the mould of our thinkings
God we would force and enchain to the throb of our hearts the immortals,-
Justice and Virtue, her sister; for where is justice mid creatures
Perfectly? Even the gods are betrayed by our clay to a semblance.
Evil not good he sows who lifted high o'er his fellows
Dreams by his light or his force to compel this deity earth-born,
Evil though his wisdom exceeded the gathered light of the millions,

^¹Chieftains ^²champions ^³lofty

Page-482

Evil though his single fate were vaster than Troy and Achaia.
Less is our gain from gods upon earth than from men in our image;
Just is the slow and common march, not a lonely swiftness
Far from our human reach that is vowed to impossible strivings.
Better the stumbling leader of men than inimitable paces.
If he be Peleus' son and his name the Phthian Achilles,
Worse is the bane: lo, the Ilian battlefield red with his errors!
Yet, 0 ye Greeks, if the heart returns that was loved, though it wandered,
Though with some pride it return and reproaching the friends that it fled from,
Be not less fond than heart-satisfied parents who yearn o'er that coming,
Smile at its pride and accept the wanderer. Happier music
Never has beat on my grief-vexed ears than the steps of Achilles
Turning back to this Greece and the cry of his strength in its rising.
Zeus is awake in this man who his dreadful and world-slaying puissance
Gave in an hour of portentous birth to the single Achilles.
Taken today are Ilion's towers, a dead man is Priam.
Cross not the hero's will in his hour, Agamemnon Atrides,
Cross not the man whom the gods have chosen to work out their purpose
Then when he rises; his hour is his, though thine be all morrows.
First in the chambers of Paris' delight let us stable our horses,
Afterwards bale that is best shall be done persuading Achilles;
Doubt not the gods' decisions, awful, immutable, ruthless.
Flame shall lick Troy's towers and the limbs of her old men and infants.
0 not today, not now remember the faults of the hero!
Follow him rather bravely and blindly as children their leader,
Guide your fate through the war-surge loud in the wake of his exploits,
Rise, 0 ye kings of the Greeks! leave debate for the voices of battle.
Peal forth the war-shout, pour forth the spear-sleet, surge towards Troya.
Ilion falls today; we shall turn in our ships to our children."
So Odysseus spoke and the Achaians heard him applauding;
Ever the pack by the voice of the mighty is seized and attracted!
Then from his seat Agamemnon arising his staff to the herald
Gave and around him arose the Kings of the west and its leaders.
Loud their assembly broke with a stern and martial rumour.

Page-483

So to the voice of their best they were bowed and obeyed undebating;
Men whose hearts were burning yet with implacable passion
Felt Odysseus' strength and rose up clay to his counsels.
King Agamemnon rose at his word, the wide-ruling monarch,
Rose at his word the Cretan and Locrian, Thebes and Epirus,
Nestor rose, the time-tired hoary chief of the Pylians.
Round Agamemnon the Atreid Europe surged in her chieftains
Forth from their tent on the shores of the Troad, splendid in armour,
Into the golden blaze of the sun and the race of the sea-winds.
Fierce and clear like a flame to the death-gods bright on its altar
Shone in their eyes the lust of blood and of earth and of pillage;
For in their hearts those fires replaced the passions of discord,
Forging a brittle peace by a common hatred and yearning.
Joyous they were of mood; for their hopes were already in Troya
Sating with massacre, plunder and rape and the groans of their foemen
Death and Hell in our mortal bosoms seated and shrouded;
There they have altars and seats in mankind in this fair-builded temple
Made for purer gods; but we turn from tender luminous temptings,
Vainly the divine whispers seek us; the heights are rejected.¹

Man to his earth drawn always prefers the murmurs of her promptings,
Man, devouring, devoured who is slayer and slain through the ages
Since by the beast he soars held and exceeds not that pedestal's measure.
They now followed close on the steps of the mighty Atrides,
Glued like the forest pack to the war-scarred coat of its leader,
Glued as the pack when wolves follow their prey like Doom that can turn not.
Perfect forms and beautiful faces crowded the tent-door,
Brilliant eyes and fierce of souls that remembered the forest,
Wild beasts touched by thought and savages lusting for beauty,
Dire and fierce and formidable chieftains followed Atrides.
Merciless kings of merciless men and the founders of Europe,
Sackers of Troy and sires of the Parthenon, Athens and Caesar.
Here they had come to destroy the ancient perishing cultures;
For, it is said, from the savage we rose and were born to a wild beast.
So when the Eye supreme perceives that we rise up too swiftly,
Drawn towards height but fullness contemning, called by the azure,

¹man rejects them

Page-484

Life when we fail in, poor in our base and forgetting our mother,
Back we are hurled to our roots; we recover our sap from the savage.
So were these sent by Zeus to destroy the old that was grandiose,
Such were those frames of old as the sons of Heaven might have chosen
Who in the dawn of eternity wedded the daughters of Nature,
Cultures touched by the morning star, vast, bold and poetic,
Titans' works and joys, but thrust down from their puissance and pleasure
Fainting now fell from the paces of Time or were left by his ages.
So were these born from Zeus to found the new that should flower
Lucid and slender and perfectly little as fit for this mortal
Ever who sinks back fatigued from immortality's stature;
Man, repelled by the gulfs within him and shrinking from vastness,
Form of the earth accepts and is glad of the lap of his mother.
Safe through the infinite seas could his soul self-piloted voyage
Chasing the dawns and the wondrous horizons, eternity's secrets
Drawn from her luminous gulfs! But he journeys rudderless, helmless,
Driven and led by the breath of God who meets him with tempest,
Hurls at him Night. The earth is safer, warmer its sunbeams;
Death and limits are known; so he clings to them hating the summons.
So might one dwell who has come to take joy in a fair-lighted prison;
Amorous grown of its marble walls and its noble adornments,
Lost to mightier cares and the spaces boundlessly calling,
Lust of the infinite skies he forgets and the kiss of the storm-winds,
So might one live who inured to his days of the field and the farm-yard
Shrinks from the grandiose mountain-tops; shut up in lanes and in hedges
Only his furrows he leads and only orders his gardens,
Only his fleeces weaves and drinks of the yield of his vine-rows:
Lost to his ear is the song of the waterfall, wind in the forests.
Now to our earth we are bent and we study the skies for its image.
That was Greece and its shining, that now is France and its keenness,
That still is Europe though by the Christ-touch troubled and tortured,
Seized by the East but clasping her chains and resisting our freedom.
Then was all founded on Phrygia's coasts, round Ilion's ramparts,
Then by the spear of Achilles, then in the Trojan death-cry;
Bearers mute of a future world were those armoured Achaians.
So they arrived from Zeus, an army led by the death-god.
So one can see them still who has sight from the gods in the trance-sleep
Out from the tent emerging on Phrygia's coasts in their armour;
Those of the early seed Pelasgian slighter in stature,
Dark-haired, hyacinth-curled from the isles of the sea and the southron

Page - 485

Soft-eyed men with pitiless hearts; bright-haired the Achaians
Hordes of the Arctic Dawn who had fled from the ice and death-blasts;

Children of conquerors lured to the coasts and the breezes and olives,

Noons of Mediterranean suns and the kiss of the south-wind

Mingled their brilliant force with the plastic warmth of the Hamite.

There they shall rule and their children long till Fate and the Dorian

Break down Hellene doors and trample stern through the passes.

Mixed in a glittering rout on the Ocean beaches one sees them,
Perfect and beautiful figures and fronts, not as now are we mortals

Marred and crushed by our burden long of thought and of labour;

Perfect were these as our race bright-imaged was first by the Thinker

Seen who in golden lustres shapes all the glories we tarnish,
Rich from the moulds of gods and unmarred in their splendour and
swiftness
Many and mighty they came o'er the beaches loud of the Aegean,
Roots of an infant world and the morning stars of this Europe,
Great Agamemnon's kingly port and the bright Menelaus,
Tall Idomeneus, Nestor; Odysseus Atlas-shouldered,
Helmeted Ajax, his chin of the beast and his eyes of the dreamer.

Over the sands they dispersed to their armies ranked by the Ocean.

But from the Argive front Acirrous loosed by Tydides
Parted as hastens a shaft from the string and he sped on intently

Swift where the beaches were bare or threading the gaps of the nations;

Crossing Thebes and Epirus he passed through the Lemnian archers,
Ancient Gnossus' hosts and Meriones' leaderless legions.
Heedless of cry and of laughter and calling over the sea-sands

Swiftly he laboured, wind in his hair and the sea to him crying,
Straight he ran to the Myrmidon hosts and the tents of Achilles.
There he beheld at his tent-door the Phthian gleaming in armour,

Glittering-helmed with the sun that climbed now the cusp of Cronion,
Nobly tall, excelling humanity, planned like Apollo.
Proud at his side like a pillar upreared of snow or of marble,
Golden-haired, hard and white was the boy Neoptolemus, fire-eyed.
New were his feet to the Trojan sands from the ships and from Scyros:
Led to this latest of all his father's fights in the Trod
He for his earliest battle waited, the son of Achilles.
So In her mood had Fate brought them together, the son and the father,
Even as our souls travelling different paths have met in the ages
Each for its work and they cling for an hour to the names of affection,
Then Time's long waves bear them apart for new forms we shall know not,

Page-486

So these two long severed had met in the shadow of parting.
Often he smote his hand on the thigh-piece for sound of the armour,

Bent his ear to the plains or restless moved like a war-horse
Curbed by his master's will, when he stands new-saddled for battle

Hearing the voice of ,the trumpets afar and pawing the meadows.

Over the sands Acirrous came to them running and toiling,
Known from far-off for he ran unhelmeted. High on the hero
Sunlike smiled the golden Achilles and into the tent-space

Seized by the hand and brought him and seated. "War-shaft of Troezen,
Whence was thy speed, Acirrous? Com'st thou, O friend, to my tent-side
Spurred by thy eager will or the trusted stern Diomedes?
Or from the Greeks like the voice still loud from a heart that is hollow?
What say the banded princes of Greece to the single Achilles?
Bringst thou flattery pale or an empty and futureless menace?"
But to the strength of Pelides the hero Acirrous answered:
"Response none send¹ the Greeks to thy high-voiced message and challenge;

Only their shout at thy side will reply when thou leapst into Troya.

So have their chieftains willed and the wisdom calm of Odysseus."

But with a haughty scorn made answer the high-crested Hellene:

"Wise is Odysseus, wise are the hearts of Achaia's chieftains.
Iiion’s chiefs are enough for their strength and life is too brittle
Hurrying Fate to advance on the spear of the Phthian Achilles."
"Not from the Greeks have I sped to thy tents, their friendship or quarrel

Urged not my feet; but Tiryn's chieftain strong Diomedes
Sent me claiming a word long old that first by his war-car
Young Neoptolemus come from island Scyros should enter

Far-crashing into the fight that has lacked this shoot of Achilies,

Pressing in front with his father's strength in the playground of Ares,

Shouting his father's cry as he clashed to his earliest battle.
So let Achilles’ son twin-carred fight close by Tydides,
Seal of the ancient friendship new-sworn twixt your sires in their boyhood
Then when they learned the spear to guide and strove in the wrestle."

So he spoke recalling other times and regretted
And to the Argive's word consented the strength of Pelides.
He on the shoulder white of his son with a gesture of parting
Laid his fateful hand and spoke from his prescient spirit:
"Opening the foemen's ranks than the hero stern Diomedes.
Noble that rugged heart, thy father's friend and his father's.

¹give/make

Page-487

Journey through all wide Greece, seek her prytanies, schools and palaestras,

Traverse Ocean's rocks and the cities that dream on his margin,

Phocian dales, Aetolia's cliffs and Arcady's pastures,
Never a second man Wilt thou find, but alone Diomedes.
Pyrrhus, follow his counsels. always losing thy father,
If in this battle I fall and Fate has denied to me Troya.
Pyrrhus, be like thy father in virtue, thou canst not excel him;

Noble be in peace, invincible, brave in the battle,
Stern and calm to thy foe, to the suppliant merciful. Mortal
Favour and wrath as thou walkst heed never, son of Achilles.
Always thy will and the right impose on thy friend and thy foeman.

Count not life nor death, defeat nor triumph, Pyrrhus.
Only thy soul regard and the gods in thy joy or thy labour."
Pyrrhus heard and erect with a stride that was rigid and stately

Forth with Acirrous went from his sire to the joy of the battle.

Little he heeded the word of death that the god in our bosom

Spoke from the lips of Achilles, but deemed at sunset returning, Pparis or dangerous mighty Aeneas,
Proudly to lay at his father's feet the spoils of the foeman.
But in his lair alone the godlike doomed Pelides
Turned to the door of his tent and was striding forth to the battle,
When from her inner chamber Briseis parting the curtain, -
Long had she stood there spying and waiting her lonely occasion,-

Came and caught and held his hand like a creeper detaining
Vainly a moment the deathward stride of the kings of the forest.

"Tarry awhile, Achilles; not yet have the war-horns clamoured.
Nor have the scouts streamed yet from Xanthus fierily running.
Lose a moment for her who has only thee under heaven.
Nay, had war sounded, thou yet wouldst squander that moment, Achilles,

Hearkening a woman's fears and the voice of a dream in the midnight.

Art thou not gentle, even as terrible, lion of Hellas ?
Others have whispered the deeds of thy wrath; we have heard, but not seen it;

Marvelling much at their pallor and awe we have listened and wondered.

Never with thrall or slave-girl or captive saw I thee angered,
Hero, nor any humble heart ever trembled to near thee.
Pardoning rather our many faults and our failures in service
Lightly thou layest thy yoke on us, kind as the clasp of a lover
Sparing the weak as thou breakest the mighty, O godlike Achilles.
Only thy equals have felt all the dread of the death-god Within thee;

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We have presumed and played with the strength at which nations have trembled.

Lo, thou hast leaned thy mane to the clutch of the boys and the maidens."
But to Briseis white-armed made answer smiling Achilles:
"Something surely, thou needst, for thou flatterest long, O. Briseis.

Tell me, O woman, thy fear or thy dream that my touch may dispel it,
White-armed net of bliss slipped down from the gold Aphrodite."
And to Achilles answered the captive white Briseis:
"Long have they vexed my soul in the tents of the Greeks, O Achilles,
Telling of Thetis thy mother who bore thee in caves of the Ocean
Clasped by a mortal and of her fear from the threats of the Ancients,

Weavers of doom who play with our hopes and smile at our passions

Painting Time with the red of our hearts on the web they have woven,

How on the Ocean's bosom she hid thee in vine-tangled Scyros
Clothed like a girl among girls with the daughters of King Lycomedes, -
Art thou not fairer than woman's beauty, yet great as Apollo?-
Fearing; Paris' shafts and the anger of Delian Phoebus. .
Now in the night has a vision three times besieged me from heaven.
Over the sea in my dream an argent bow was extended;
Nearing I saw a terror august over moonlit waters,
Cloud and a fear and a face that was young and lovely and hostile.
Then three times I heard arise in the grandiose silence, -
Still was the sky and still was the land and still were the waters, -

Echoing a mighty voice, 'Take back, O King, what thou gavest;

Strength, take thy strong man, sea, take thy wave, till the warfare eternal

Need him again to thunder through Asia’s plains to the. Ganges.'
That fell silent, but nearer the beautiful Terror approached me,
Clang I heard of the argent bow and I gazed on Apollo.
Shrilly I cried, for 'twas¹ thee that the shaft of the heavens had yearned for,

Thee that it sought like a wild thing in anger straight at its quarry,

Quivering into thy heel. I awoke and found myself trembling,
Held thee safe in my arms, yet hardly believed that thou livest.
Lo, in the night came this dream; on the morn thou arisest for battle."

But to Briseis white-armed made answer the golden Achilles:
"This was a dream indeed, O princess, daughter of Brises!
Will it restrain Achilles from fight, the lion from preying?

Come, thou hast heard of my prowess and knowest what man is Achilles.

Deemst thou so near my end? or does Polyxena vex thee,

Jealousy shaping thy dreams to frighten me back from her capture?

"

¹it was

Page-489

Passionate, vexed Briseis, smiting his arm with her fingers,
Yet with a smile half-pleased made answer to mighty Achilles:
"Thinkst thou I fear thee at all? I am brave and will chide thee and threaten.

See that thou recklessly throw not, Achilles, thy life into battle
Hurting this body, my world, nor venture sole midst thy foemen,

Leaving thy shielders behind as oft thou art wont in thy war-rage

Lured by thy tempting gods who seek their advantage to slay thee,

Fighting divinely, careless of all but thy spear and thy foeman.

Cover thy limbs with thy shield, speed slowly restraining thy coursers.

Dost thou not know all the terrible void and cold desolation
Once again my life must become if I lose thee, Achilles?
Twice then thus wilt thou smite me, O hero, a desolate woman?
I will not stay behind on an earth that is empty and kingless.
Into the grave I will leap, through the fire I will burn, I will follow

Down into Hades' depths or wherever thy footsteps go clanging,

Hunting thee always, - didst thou not seize me here for thy pleasure? -

Stronger there by my love as thou than I here, O Achilles.
Thou shalt not dally alone with Polyxena safe in the shadows."
But to Briseis answered the hero, mighty Pelides,
Holding her delicate hands like gathered flowers in his bosom,
Pressing her passionate mouth like a rose that trembles with beauty:

"There then follow me even as I would have drawn thee, O woman,

Voice that chimes with my soul and hands that are eager for service,

Beautiful spoil beloved of my foemen, perfect Briseis.
But for the dreams that come to us mortals sleeping or waking,

Shadows are these from our souls and who shall discern what they figure?

Fears from the heart speak voiced like Zeus, take shape as Apollo.
But were they truer than Delphi's cavern voice or Dodona's
Moan that seems wind in his oaks immemorable, how should they alter

Fate that the stern gods have planned from the first when the earth was unfashioned,

Shapeless the gyre of the sun? For dream or for oracle adverse
Why should man swerve from the path of his feet? The gods have invented

Only one way for a man through the world, O my slave-girl Briseis,

Valiant to be and noble and truthful and just to the humble.
Only one way for a woman, to love and serve and be faithful.
This observe, thy task in thy destiny noble or fallen;
Time and result are the gods'; with these things be not thou troubled."

So he spoke and kissed her lips and released her and parted.
Out from the tent he strode and into his chariot leaping

Page-490

Seized the reins and shouted his cry and drove with a far-borne
Sound of wheels mid the clamour of hooves and neigh of the war-steeds

Swift through the line of the tents and forth from the heart the leaguer.

Over the causeway Troyward thundered the wheels of Achilles.
After him crashing loud with a fierce and resonant rumour
Chieftains impetuous prone to the mellay and swift at the war-cry
Came, who long held from the lust of the spear and the joy of the war-din

Rushed over earth like hawks released through the air; a shouting

Limitless rolled behind, for nations followed each war-cry. .
Lords renowned of the northern hills and the plains and the coast-lands,

Many a Dorian, many a Phthian, many a Hellene,
Names now lost to the ear though then reputed immortal!
Night has swallowed them, Zeus has devoured the light of his children;

Drawn are they back to his bosom vast whence they came in their fierceness

Thinking to conquer the earth and dominate Time and his ages.
Nor on their left less thick came numerous even as the sea-sands
Forth from the line of the leaguer that skirted the far-sounding waters,

Ranked behind Tydeus’ son and the Spartan, bright Menelaus,

Ithaca's chief and Epeus Idomeneus lord of the Cretans,
Acamos. Nestor, Neleus’ son, and the brave Ephialtus,
Prothous, Meges, Leitus the bold and the king Prothoenor,
Wise Alceste's son and the Lemnian, stern Philoctetes,
These and unnumbered warlike captains marching the Argives.
Last in his spacious car drove shaping the tread of his armies,
Even as a shepherd who follows his flock to the green the pastures,

Atreus far-famed son, the monarch great Agamemnon.
They on the plain moved out and gazing far over the pastures
Saw behind Xanthus rolling with dust like a cloud full of thunder;

Ominous, steadily nearing, shouting their war-cry the Trojans.

Page-491

So on the earth the seed that was sown of the centuries ripened;

Europe and Asia, met on their borders, clashed in the Troad.

All over earth men wept and bled and laboured, world-wide

Sowing Fate with their deeds and had other fruit than they hoped for.

Out of desires and their passionate griefs and fleeting enjoyments

Weaving a tapestry fit for the gods to admire, who in silence

Joy, by the cloud and the sunbeam veiled, and men know not their movers.

They in the glens of Olympus, they by the waters of Ida

Or in their temples worshipped in vain or with heart-strings of mortals

Sated their vast desire and enjoying the world and each other

Sported free and unscourged; for the earth was their prey and their play- ground.

But from his luminous deep domain, from his estate of azure

Zeus looked forth; he beheld the earth in its flowering greenness

Spread like an emerald dream that the eyes have enthroned in the sunlight,

Heard the symphonies old of the ocean recalling the ages

Lost and dead from its marches salt and unharvested furrows,

Felt in the pregnant hour the unborn hearts of the future.

Troubled kingdoms of men he beheld, the hind in the furrow,

Lords of the glebe and the serf subdued to the yoke of his fortunes,

Slave-girls tending the fire and herdsmen driving the cattle,

Artisans labouring long for a little hire in men’s cities,

Labour long and the meagre reward for a toil that is priceless.

Kings in their seats august or marching swift with their armies

Founded ruthlessly brittle empires. Merchant and toiler

Patiently heaped up our transient wealth like the ants in their hillock.

And to preserve it all, to protect this dust that must perish,

Hurting the eternal soul and maiming heaven for some metal

Judges condemned their brothers to chains 'and to death and to torment,

Criminals scourgers of crime, - for so are these ant-heaps founded, -

Punishing sin by a worse affront to our crucified natures.

All the uncertainty, all the mistaking, all the delusion

Naked were to ills. gaze; in the moonlit orchards there wandered

Lovers dreaming of love that endures - till the moment of treason;

Helped by the anxious joy of their kindred supported their anguish

Women with travail racked for the child who shall rack them with sorrow.

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Hopes that were confident, fates that sprang dire from the seed of a moment,

Yearning that claimed all time for its date and all life for its fuel,

All that we wonder at gazing back when the passion has fallen,

Labour blind and vain expense and sacrifice wasted,

These he beheld with a heart unshaken; to each side he studied

Seas of confused attempt and the strife and the din and the crying.

All things he pierced in us gazing down with his eyelids immortal,

Lids on which sleep dare not settle, the Father of men on his creatures;

Nor by the cloud and the mist was obscured which baffles our eyeballs,

But he distinguished our source and saw to the end of our labour.

He in the animal racked knew the god that is slowly delivered;

Therefore his heart rejoiced. Not alone the mind in its trouble

God beholds, but the spirit behind that has joy of the torture.

Might not our human gaze on the smoke of a furnace, the burning

Red, intolerable, anguish of ore that is fused in the hell-heat,

Shrink and yearn for coolness and peace and condemn all the labour?

Rather look to the purity coming, the steel in its beauty,

Rather rejoice with the master who stands in his gladness accepting

Heat of the glorious god and the fruitful pain of the iron.

Last the eternal gaze was fixed on Troy and the armies

Marching swift to the shock. It beheld the might of Achilles

Helmed and armed, knew all the craft in the brain of Odysseus,

Saw Deiphobus stern in his car and the fates of Aeneas,

Greece of her heroes empty, Troy enringed by her slayers,

Paris a setting star and the beauty of Penthesilea.

These things he saw delighted; the heart that contains all our ages

Blessed our toil and grew full of its fruits, as the Artist eternal

Watched his vehement drama staged twixt the sea and the mountains,

Phrased in the clamour and glitter of arms and dosed by the firebrand,

Act itself out in the Blood and in passions fierce on the Troad.

Yet as a father his children, who sits in the peace of his study

Hearing the noise of his brood and pleased with their play and their quarrels,

So he beheld our mortal race. Then, turned from the armies,

Into his mind he gazed where Time is reflected and, conscient,

Knew the iron knot of our human fates in their warfare.

Calm he arose and left our earth for his limitless kingdoms.

Far from this lower blue and high in the death-scorning spaces

Lifted above mortal mind where Time and Space are but figures

Lightly imagined by Thought divine in her luminous stillness,

Zeus has his palace high and there he has stabled his war-car.

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Thence he descends to our mortal realms; where the heights of our mountains

Meet with the divine air, he touches and enters our regions.

Now he ascended back to his natural realms and their rapture,

There where all life is bliss and each feeling an ecstasy mastered

Thence his eagle Thought with its flashing pinions extended

Winged through the world to the gods, and they came at the call, they ascended

Up from their play and their calm and their works through the infinite azure.

Some from our mortal domains in grove or by far-flowing river

Cool from the winds of the earth or quivering with perishable fragrance

Came, or our laughter they bore and the song of the sea in their paces.

Some from the heavens above us arrived, our vital dominions

Whence we draw breath; for there all things have life, the stone like the ilex,

Clay of those realms like the children of men and the brood of the giants.

There Enceladus groans oppressed and draws strength from his anguish

Under a living Aetna and flames that have joy of his entrails.

Fiercely he groans and rejoices expecting the end of his foemen

Hastened by every pang and counts long Time by his writhings.

There in the champaigns unending battle the gods and the giants,

There in eternal groves the lovers have pleasure for ever,

There are the faery climes and there are the wonderful pastures.

Some from a marvellous Paradise hundred-realmed in its musings

Million-ecstasied, climbed like flames that in silence aspire

Windless, erect in a motionless dream, yet ascending for ever.

All grew aware of the will divine and grew near¹ to their Father.

Grandiose, calm in her gait, imperious, awing the regions,

Hera came in her pride, the spouse of Zeus and his sister.

As at her birth from the foam of the spaces whitei its halo.

Aegis-bearing Athene, shielded and helmeted, answered

Rushing the call and the heavens thrilled with the joy of her footsteps

Dumbly repeating her name, as insulted and trampled by beauty

Thrill might the soul of a lover and cry out the name of its tyrant.

Others there were as mighty; for Artemis, archeress ancient,

Came on her sandals lightning-tasselled. Up the vast incline

Shaking the world with the force of his advent thundered Poseidon;

Space grew full of his stride and his cry. Immortal Apollo

Shone and his silver clang was heard with alarm in our kingdoms.

Ares’ impetuous eyes looked forth from a cloud-drift of splendour;

¹The original which seems scratched out in favour of “grew near” was “were drawn”.

Page-494

Themis’ steps appeared and Ananke, the mystic Erinnys;

Nor was Hephaestus’ flaming strength from his father divided.

Even the ancient Dis to arrive dim-featured, eternal,

Seemed; but his rays are the shades and his voice is the call of the silence.

Into the courts divine they crowded, radiant, burning,

Perfect in utter grace and light. The joy of their spirits

Calls to eternal Time and the glories of Space are his answer:

Thence were these bright worlds born and persist by the throb of their heart-beats.

Not in the forms that mortals have seen when assisted they scatter
Mists of this earthly dust from their eyes in their moments of greatness

Shone those unaging Powers; nor as in our centuries radiant

Mortal-seeming bodies they wore when they mixed with our nations.

Then the long youth of the world had not faded still out of our natures,

Flowers and the sunlight were felt and the earth was glad like a mother.

Then for a human delight they were masked in this denser vesture

Earth desires for her bliss, - thin veils, for the god through them glimmered,

Quick were men's days with the throng of the brilliant presences near them:

Gods from the wood and the valley, gods from the obvious wayside,

Gods on the secret hills leaped out from their light on the mortal.

Oft in the haunt and the grove they met with our kind and their touches

Seized and subjected our clay to the greatness of passions supernal,

Grasping the earthly virgin and forcing heaven on this death-dust.

Glorifying human beauty Apollo roamed in our regions

Clymene when he pursued or yearned in vain for Marpessa;

Glorifying earth with a human-seeming face of the beauty

Brought from her heavenly climes Aphrodite mixed with Anchises.

Glimpsed in the wilds were the Satyrs, seen in the woodlands the Graces,

Dryad and Naiad in river and forest, Oreads haunting

Glens and the mountain-glades where they played with the manes of our lions

Glimmered on death-claimed eyes; for the gods then were near us and clasped us,

Heaven leaned down in love with our clay and yearned to its transience.

But we have coarsened in heart and in mood; we have turned in our natures

Nearer our poorer kindred; leaned to the ant and the ferret.

Sight we have darkened with sense and power we have stifled with labour,

Likened in mood, to the things we gaze at and are in our vestures:

Therefore we toil unhelped; we are left to our weakness and blindness.

Not in those veils now they rose to their skies, but like loose-fitting mantles

Page-495

Dropped in the vestibules huge of their vigorous realms that besiege us

All that reminded of earth; then clothed with raiment of swiftness

Straight they went quivering up in a glory like fire or the storm-blast.

Even those natural vestures of puissance they leave when they enter

Mind's more subtle fields and agree with its limitless regions

Peopled by creatures of bliss and forms more true than earth's shadows,–

Mind that pure from this density, throned in her splendours immortal

Looks up at Light and suffers bliss from ineffable kingdoms

Where beyond Mind and its rays is the gleam of a glory supernal:

There our sun cannot shine and our moon has no place for her lustres,

There our lightnings flash not, nor fire of these spaces is suffered.

They with bodies impalpable here to our touch and our seeing,

But for a higher delight, to a brighter sense, with more sweetness

Palpable there and visible, thrilled with a lordlier joyance,

Came to the courts of Zeus and his heavens sang to their footsteps.

Harmonies flowed through the blissful coils of the kingdoms of rapture.

Then by his mighty equals surrounded the Thunderer regnant

Veiled his thought in sound that was heard in their souls as they listened,

Veiled are the high gods always lest there should dawn on the mortal

Light too great from the skies and men to their destiny clear-eyed

Walk unsustained like the gods; then Night and Dawn were defeated

And of their masks the deities robbed would be slaves to their subjects,

"Children of Immortality, gods who are joyous for ever,

Rapture is ours and eternity measures our lives by his aeons.

For we desireless toil who have joy in the fall as the triumph,

Knowledge eternal possessing we work for an end that is destined

Long already beyond by the Will of which Time is the courser.

Therefore death cannot alter our lives nor pain our enjoyment.

But in the world of mortals twilight is lord of its creatures.

Nothing they perfectly see, but all things seek and imagine,

Out of the clod who have come and would climb from their mire to our heavens

Blindly mistaking the throb of their mortal desires for our guidance,

Yet are the heavenly seats not easy even for the chosen:

Rough and remote is that path; that ascent is too hard for the death-bound,

Hard are God's terms and few can meet them of men who are mortal.

Mind resists; their breath is a clog; by their tools they are hampered.

How shall they win in their earth to our skies who are clay and a life-wind,

But that their hearts we invade ? Our shocks on their lives come incessant,

Ease discourage and penetrate coarseness; sternness celestial

Page – 496

Forces their souls towards the skies and their bodies by anguish are sifted.

We in the mortal wake an immortal strength by our tortures

And by the flame of our lightnings choose out the vessels of godhead.

This is the nature of earth that to blows she responds and by scourgings

Travails excited; pain is the bed of her blossoms of pleasure.

Earth that was wakened by pain to life and by hunger to thinking

Left to her joys rests inert and content with her gains and her station.

But for the unbearable whips of the gods back soon to her matter

She would go glad and the goal would be missed and the aeons be wasted.

But for the god in their breasts unsatisfied, but for his spurrings

Soon would the hero turn beast and the sage reel back to the savage;

Man from his difficult heights would recoil and be mud in the earth-mud.

This by pain we prevent; we compel his feet to the journey.

But in their minds to impression made subject, by forms of things captured

Blind is the thought and presumptuous the hope and they swerve from our goading;

Blinded are human hearts by desire and fear and possession,

Darkened is knowledge on earth by hope the helper of mortals.

Now too from earth and her children voices of anger and weeping

Beat at our thrones; 'tis the grief and the wrath of fate-stricken creatures,

Mortals struggling with destiny, hearts that are slaves to their sorrow.

We unmoved by the cry will fulfil our unvarying purpose.

Troy shall fall at last and the ancient ages shall perish.

You who are lovers of Ilion turn from the moans of her people,

Chase from your hearts their prayers, blow back from your nostrils the incense.

Let not one nation resist by its glory the good of the ages.

Twilight thickens over man and he moves to his winter of darkness.

Troy that displaced with her force and her arms the luminous ancients,

Sinks in her turn by the ruder strength of the half-savage Achaians.

They to the Hellene shall yield and the .Hellene fall by the Roman

Rome too shall not endure, but by strengths ill-shaped shall be broken,

Nations formed in the ice and mist, confused and crude-hearted.

So shall the darker and ruder always prevail o'er the brilliant

Till in its turn to a ruder and darker it falls and is shattered.

So shall mankind make speed to destroy what 'twas mighty creating.

Ever since knowledge failed and the ancient ecstasy slackened,

Light has been helper to death and darkness increases the victor.

So shall it last till the fallen ages return to their greatness.

For if the twilight be helped not, night o'er the world cannot darken;

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Night forbidden how shall a greater dawn be effected?

Gods of the light who know and resist that the doomed may have succour,

Always then shall desire and passion strive with Ananke?

Conquer the cry of your heart-strings that man too may conquer his sorrow

Stilled in his yearnings. Cease, 0 ye gods, from the joy of rebellion.

Open the eye of the soul, admit the voice of the Silence."

So in the courts of Heaven august the Thunderer puissant

Spoke to his sons in their souls and they heard him, mighty in silence.¹

Then to her brother divine the white-armed passionless Hera:

"Zeus, we remember, thy sons forget, Apollo and Ares."

"Hera, queen of the heavens, they forget not, but choose to be mindless.

This is the greatness of gods that they know and can put back the knowledge;

Doing the work they have chosen they turn not for fruit nor for failure.

Griefless they walk to their goal and strain not their eyes towards the ending.

Light that they have they can lose with a smile, not as souls in the darkness

Clutch at every beam and mistake their one ray for all splendour.

All things are by Time and the Will eternal that moves us.

And for each birth its hour is set in the night or the dawning.

There is an hour for knowledge, an hour to forget and to labour."

Great Cronion ceased and high in the heavenly silence

Rose in their midst the voice of the loud impetuous Ares

Sounding far in the luminous fields of his soul as with thunder.

"Father, we know and we have not forgotten. This is our godhead,

Still to strive and never to yield to the evil that conquers.

I will not dwell with the Greeks nor aid them save forced by Ananke

And because lives of the great and the blood of the strong are my portion.

This too thou knowest, our nature enjoys in mankind its fulfilment.

War is my nature and greatness and hardness, the necks of the vanquished;

Force is my soul and strength is my bosom; I shout in the battle

Breaking cities like toys and the nations are playthings of Ares:

Hither and thither I shove them and throw down or range on my table.

Constancy most I love, nobility, virtue and courage;

Fugitive hearts I abhor and the nature fickle as sea-foam.

Now if the ancient spirit of Titan battle is over, —

Tros fights no more on the earth, nor now Heracles tramples and struggles,

Bane of the hydra or slaying the Centaurs o'er Pelion driven,—

Now if the earth no more must be shaken by Titan horse-hooves,

Since to a pettier framework all things are fitted consenting,

Yet will I dwell not in Greece nor favour the nurslings of Palms.

¹ "Silence" was cancelled in the MS. but remained unsubstituted.

Page – 498

I will await the sons of my loins and the teats of the she-wolf,

Consuls browed like the cliffs and plebeians stern of the wolf-brood,

Senates of kings and armies of granite that grow by disaster;

Such be the nation august that is fit for the favour of Ares

They shall fulfil me and honour my mother, imperial Hera.

Then with an iron march they shall move to their world-wide dominion,

Through the long centuries rule and at last because earth is impatient,

Slowly with haughtiness perish compelled by mortality's transience

Leaving a Roman memory stamped on the ages of weakness."

But to his son far-sounding the Father high of the Immortals:

"So let it be since such is the will in thee, mightiest Ares;

Thou shalt till sunset prevail, O war-god, fighting for Troya."

So he decreed and the soul of the Warrior sternly consented.

He from his seats arose and down on the summits of Ida.

Flaming through Space in his cloud in a headlong glory descended,

Prone like a thunderbolt flaming down from the hand of the Father.

Thence in his chariot drawn by living fire and by swiftness,

Thundered down to earth's plains the mighty impetuous Ares.

Far where Deiphobus stern was labouring stark and outnumbered

Smiting the Achaian myriads back on the right of the carnage,

Over the hosts in his car he stood .and darkened the Argives.

But in the courts divine the Thunderer spoke to his children:

Ares resisting a present Fate for the hope of the future

Gods has gone forth from us. Choose thou thy paths, O my daughter,

More than thy brother assailed by the night that darkens o'er creatures.

Choose the silence in heaven or choose the struggle mid mortals,

Golden joy of the worlds, O thou roseate white Aphrodite."

Then with her starry eyes and bosom of bliss from the Immortals

Glowing and rosy-limbed cried the wonderful white Aphrodite,

Drawing her fingers like flowers through the flowing gold of her tresses,

Calm, discontented, her perfect mouth a rose of resistance

Chidingly budded’ gainst Fate, a charm to their senses enamoured:

"Well do I know thou hast given my world to Hera and Pallas.

What though my temples shall stand in Paphos and island Cythera

And though the Greek be a priest for my thoughts and a lyre for my singing,

Beauty pursuing and light through the figures of grace and of rhythm, —

Forms shall he mould for men's eyes that the earth has forgotten and mourns for,

Mould even the workings of Pallas to commune with Paphia's sweetness,

Mould Hephaestus' craft in the gaze of the gold Aphrodite, —

Page – 499

Only my form he pursues that I wear for a mortal enchantment,
He to whom now thou givest the world, the Ionian, the Hellene,
But for my might is unfit which Babylon worshipped and Sidon
Palely received from the past in images faint of the gladness
Once that was known by the children of men when the thrill of their members
Was but the immortal joy of the spirit overflowing in Nature
Wine-cups of God's desire; but their clay from my natural greatness
Falters betrayed to pain, their delight they have turned into ashes.
Nor to my peaks shall he rise and the perfect fruit of my promptings,
There where the senses swoon but the heart is delivered by rapture:
Never my touch can cling to his soul nor reply from his heart-strings.
Once could my godhead surprise all the stars with the seas of its rapture;
Once the world in its orbit danced to a marvellous rhythm.
Men in their limits, gods in their amplitudes answered my calling;
Life was moved by a chant of delight that sang¹ from the spaces
Sung from the Soul of the Vast, His² ecstasy clasping His creatures.
Sweetly agreed my fire with their soil and their hearts were as altars.
Pure were its crests; 'twas not dulled with earth, 'twas not lost in the hazes.
Then when the sons of earth and the daughters of heaven together
Met on lone mountain peaks or, linked on wild beach and green meadow,
Twining embraced. For I danced on Taygetus' peaks and o'er Ida
Naked and loosing my golden hair like a nimbus of glory
O'er a deep-ecstasied earth that was drunk with my roses and whiteness.
There was no shrinking nor veil in our old Saturnian kingdoms,
Equal were heaven and earth, twin gods on the lap of Dione.
Now shall my waning greatness perish and pass out of Nature.
For though the Romans, my children, shall grasp at the strength of their
mother,
They shall not hold the god, but lose in unsatisfied orgies
Yet what the earth has kept of my joy, my glory, my puissance,
Who shall but drink for a troubled hour in the dusk of the sunset
Dregs of my wine Pandemian missing the Uranian sweetness.
So shall the night descend on the greatness and rapture of living;
Creeds that refuse shall persuade the world to revolt from its mother.
Pallas' adorers shall loathe me and Hera's scorn me for lowness;

¹There is some uncertainty about this word in relation to the next line which now begins with "Sung" but originally did so with "Out". Originally, "sprang" stood instead of "sang" in the first line.

² Its

Page - 500

Beauty shall pass from men's work and delight from their play and their Rama labour;
Earth restored to the Cyclops shall shrink from the gold Aphrodite.
So shall I live diminished, owned but by beasts in the forest,
Birds of the air and the gods in their heavens, but disgraced in the mortal."
Then to the discontented rosy-mouthed Aphrodite
Zeus replied, the Father divine: "O goddess Astarte,
What are these thoughts thou hast suffered to wing from thy rose-mouth immortal?
Bees that sting and delight are the words from thy lips, Cytherea.
Art thou not womb of the world and from thee are the throngings of creatures?
And didst thou cease the worlds too would cease and the aeons be ended.
Suffer my Greeks; accept who accept thee, O gold Dionaean.
They in the works of their craft and their dreams shall enthrone thee for ever,
Building thee temples in Paphos and Eryx and island Cythera,
Building the fane more enduring and bright of thy golden ideal.
Even if natures of men could renounce thee and God do without thee,
Rose of love and sea of delight, O my child Aphrodite
Still wouldst thou live in the worship they gave thee protected from fading,
Splendidly statured and shrined in men's works and men's thoughts Cytherea. "
Pleased and blushing with bliss of her praise and the thought of her empire
Answered, as cries a harp in heaven, the gold Aphrodite:
"Father, I know and I spoke but to hear from another my praises.
I am the womb of the world and the cause of this teeming of creatures,
And if discouraged I ceased, God's world would lose heart and perish.
How will you do then without me your works of wisdom and greatness,
Hera, queen of heaven, and thou, 0 my sister Athene?
Yes, I shall reign and endure though the pride of my workings be conquered.
What though no second Helen find a second Paris,
Lost though the glories of form to the earth, though their confident gladness
Pass from a race misled and forgetting the sap that it sprang from,
They are eternal in man in the worship of beauty and rapture.
Ever while earth is embraced by the sun and hot with his kisses
And while a Will supernal works through the passions of Nature,
Me shall men seek with my light or their darkness, sweetly or crudely,
Cold on the ice of the north or warm with the heats of the southland,

Page - 501

Slowly enduring my touch or with violence rapidly burning.
I am the sweetness of living, I am the touch of the Master.
Love shall die bound to my stake like a victim adorned as for bridal,
Life shall be bathed in my flames and be purified gold or be ashes.
I, Aphrodite shall move the world for ever and ever.
Yet now since most to me, Father of all, the ages arriving,
Hostile, rebuke my heart and turn from my joy and my sweetness,
I will resist and not yield, nor care what I do, so I conquer.
Often I curbed my mood for your sakes and was gracious and kindly,
Often I lay at Hera's feet and obeyed her commandments
Tranquil and proud or o'er come by a honeyed and ancient compulsion
Fawned on thy pureness and served thy behests, O my sister Pallas.
Deep was the love that united us, happy the wrestle and clasping;
Love divided, love united, love was our mover¹

But since you now overbear and would scourge me and chain and control me,
War I declare on you all, O my Father and brothers and sisters.
Henceforth I do my will as the joy in me prompts or the anger.
Ranging the earth with my beauty and passion and golden enjoyments
All whom I can, I will bind; I will drive at the bliss of my workings,
Whether men's hearts are seized by the joy or seized by the torture.
Most will I plague your men, your worshippers and in my malice
Break up your works with confusion divine, O my mother and sister;
Then shall you fume and resist and be helpless and pine with my torments.
Yet will I never relent but always be sweet and malignant,
Cruel and tyrannous, hurtful and subtle, a charm and a torture.
Thou too, 0 father Zeus, shalt always be vexed with my doings;
Called in each moment to judge thou shalt chafe at our cry and our quarrels,
Often grope for thy thunderbolt, often frown magisterial
Joining in vain thy awful brows o'er thy turbulent children.
Yet in thy wrath recall my might and my wickedness, Father;
Hurt me not then too much lest the world and thyself too should suffer.
Save, O my Father, life and grace and the charm of the senses;
Love preserve lest the heart of the world grow dulled and forsaken."
Smiling her smile immortal of love and of mirth and of malice
White Aphrodite arose in her loveliness armed for the conflict.
Golden and careless and joyous she went like a wild bird that winging
Flits from bough to bough and resumes its chant interrupted.
Love where her fair feet trod bloomed up like a flower from the spaces;

¹the master

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Mad round her touches billowed incessantly laughter and rapture.¹
Rich as a summer fruit and fresh as Spring's blossoms her body
Gleaming and blushing, veiled and bare and with ecstasy smiting
Burned out rosy and white through her happy ambrosial raiment,
Golden-tressed and a charm, her bosom a fragrance and peril.
So was she framed to the gaze as she came from the seats of the Mighty.
So embodied she visits the hearts of men and their dwellings
And in her breathing tenement laughs at the eyes that can see her.
Swift-footed down to the Troad she hastened thrilling the earth-gods.
There with ambrosial secrecy veiled, admiring the heroes
Strong and beautiful, might of the warring and glory of armour,
Over her son Aeneas she stood, his guard in the battle.
But in the courts divine the Thunderer spoke mid his children:
"Thou for a day and a night and another day and a nightfall,
White Aphrodite, prevail; o'er thee too the night is extended.
She has gone forth who made men like gods in their glory and gladness.
Now in the darkness coming all beauty must wane or be tarnished;
Joy shall fade and mighty Love grow fickle and fretful;
Even as a child that is scared in the night, he shall shake in his chambers.
Yet shall a portion be kept for these, Ares and white Aphrodite.
Thou whom already thy Pythoness bears not, torn by thy advent,
Caverned already who sittest in Delphi knowing thy future,
What wilt thou do with the veil and the night, O burning Apollo?"
Then from the orb of his glory unbearable save to immortals
Bright and austere replied the beautiful mystic Apollo:
"Zeus I know that I fade; already the night is around me.
Dusk she extends her reign and obscures my lightnings with error.
Therefore my prophets mislead men's hearts to the ruin appointed,
Therefore Cassandra cries in vain to her sire and her brothers.
All I endure I foresee and the strength in me waits for its coming;
All I foresee I approve; for I know what is willed, O Cronion.
Yet is the fierce strength wroth in my breast at the need of approval
And for the human race fierce pity works in my bosom;
Wroth is my splendid heart with the cowering knowledge of mortals,
Wroth are my burning eyes with the purblind vision of reason.
I will go forth from your seats and descend to the night among the mortals
There to guard the flame and the mystery; vast in my moments

¹Alternatives to this line and the preceding :

(Thrilled with her feet was the bosom of Space, for her amorous motion
Floated a flower on the wave of her bliss or swayed like the lightning.)

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Rare and sublime to sound like a sea against Time and its limits,
Cry like a spirit in pain in the hearts of the priest and the poet,
Cry against limits set and disorder sanities bounded.
Jealous for truth to the end my might shall prevail and for ever
Shatter the moulds that men make to imprison their limitless spirits.
Dire, overpowering the brain I shall speak out my oracles splendid.
Then in their ages of barren light or lucidity fruitful
When so the clear gods think they have conquered earth and its mortals,
Hidden God from all eyes, they shall wake from their dream and recoiling
Still they shall find in their paths the fallen and darkened Apollo."
So he spoke, repressing his dreadful might in his bosom,
And from their high seats passed, his soul august and resplendent
Drawn to the anguish of men and the fierce terrestrial labour.
Down he dropped with a roar of light invading the regions,
And in his fierce and burning spirit intense and uplifted
Sure of his luminous truth and careless for weakness of mortals
Flaming oppressed the earth with his dire intolerant beauty.
Over the summits descending that slept in the silence of heaven,
He through the spaces angrily drew towards the tramp and the shouting
Over the speeding of Xanthus and over the pastures of Troya.
Clang of his argent bow was the wrath restrained of the mighty,
Stern was his pace like Fate's; so he came to the warfare of mortals
And behind Paris strong and inactive waited God's moment
Knowing what should arrive, nor disturbed like men by their hopings.
But in the courts of Heaven Zeus to his brother immortal
Turned like a menaced king on his counsellor smiling augustly:
"Seest thou, Poseidon, this sign that great gods revolting have left us,
Follow their hearts and strive with Ananke? Yet though they struggle,
Thou and I will do our will with the world, O earth-shaker."
Answered to Zeus the besieger of earth, the voice of the waters:
"This is our strength and our right, for we are the kings and the masters.
Too much pity has been and yielding of Heaven to mortals.
I will go down with my chariot drawn by my thunder-maned coursers
Into the battle and thrust down Troy with my hand to the silence,
Even though she cling round the snowy knees of our child Aphrodite
Or with Apollo's sun take refuge from Night and her shadows.
I will not pity her pain, who am ruthless even as my surges.
Brother, thou knowest, O Zeus, that I am a king and a trader;
For on my paths I receive earth's skill and her merchandise gather,
Traffic richly in pearls and bear the swift ships in my bosom.

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Blue are my waves and they call men's hearts to wealth and adventure.
Lured by¹ the, shifting surges they launch their delight and their treasures
Trusting the toil of years to the perilous moments of Ocean.
Huge man's soul² in its petty frame goes wrestling with Nature
Over her vasts and his fragile ships between my horizons
Buffeting death in his solitudes labour through swell and through storm-blast
Bound for each land with her sons and watched for by eyes in each haven.
I from Tyre up to Gades trace on billows their trade-routes
And on my vast and spuming Atlantic suffer their rudders.
Carthage and Greece are my children, the marts of the world are my term-posts.
Who then deserves the earth if not he who enriches and fosters?
But thou hast favoured thy sons, O Zeus; O Hera, earth's sceptres
Still were denied me and kept for strong Ares and brilliant Apollo.
Now all your will shall be done, so you give me the earth for my nations.
Gold shall make men like gods and bind their thoughts into oneness;
Peace I will build with gold and heaven with the pearls of my caverns.'"
Smiling replied to, his brother's craft the mighty Cronion:
"Lord of the boundless seas, Poseidon. soul of the surges,
Well thou knowest that earth shall be seized as a booth for the trader.
Rome nor Greece nor Erance can drive back Carthage for ever.
Always each birth of the silence attaining the field and the movement
Takes from Time its reign; for it came for its throne and its godhead.
So too shall Mammon take and his sons their hour from the ages.
Yet is the flame and the dust last end of the silk and the iron,
And at their end the king and the prophet shall govern the nations.
Even as Troy, so shall Babylon flame up to heaven for the spoiler
Wailed by the merchant afar as he sees the red glow from the Ocean."
Up from the seats of the Mighty the Earth-shaker rose; his raiment
Round him purple and dominant rippled³ and murmured and whispered,
Whispered of argosies sunk and the pearls and the Nereids playing,
Murmured of azure solitudes, sounded of storm and the death-wail.
Even as the march of his waters so was the pace of the sea-god
Flowing on endless through Time; with the glittering symbol⁴ of empire
Crowned were his fatal brows; in his grasp was the wrath of the trident,
Tripled forces, life-shattering, brutal, imperial, sombre.
Resonant, surging, vast in the pomp of his clamorous greatness
Proud and victorious he came to his home in the far-spuming waters.
Even as a soul from the heights of thought plunges back into living,

¹On ²mind ³Originally the word here was: sounded ⁴shadow

Page – 505

So he plunged like a rock through the foam; for it falls from a mountain
Overpeering the waves in some silence of desolate waters
Left to the wind and the sea-gull where Ocean alone with the ages
Dreams of the calm of the skies or tosses its spray to the wind-gods,
Tosses for ever its foam in the solitude huge of its longings ,
Far from the homes and the noises of men. So the dark-browed Poseidon
Came to his coral halls and the sapphire stables of Nereus
Ever where champ their bits the harnessed steeds of the Ocean
Watched by foam-white girls in the caverns of still Amphitrite.
There was his chariot yoked by the Tritons, drawn by his coursers
Born of the fleeing sea-spray and shod with the north-wind who journey
Black like the front of the storm and clothed with their manes as with thunder.
This now rose from its depths to the upper tumults of Ocean
Bearing the awful brows and the mighty form of the sea-god
And from the roar of the surges fast o'er the giant margin
Came remembering the storm and the swiftness wide¹ towards the Troad.
So among men be arrived to the clamorous labours of Ares,
Close by the stern Diomedes stood and frowned o'er the battle.
He for the Trojan slaughter chose for his mace and his sword-edge
Iron Tydeus' son and the adamant heart of young Pyrrhus.
But in the courts divine the Father high of the immortals
Turned in his heart to the brilliant offspring born of his musings,
She who tranquil observes and judges her father and all things.
"What shall I say to the thought that is calm in thy breasts, O Athene?
Have I not given thee earth for thy portion, throned thee and armoured,
Darkened Cypris' smile, dimmed Hera's son and Latona's? "
Swift in thy silent ambition, proud in thy radiant sternness,
Girl, thou shalt rule with the Greek and the Saxon, the Frank and the Roman.
Worker and fighter and builder and thinker, light of the reason,
Men shall leave all temples to crowd in thy courts, O Athene.
Go then and do my will, prepare man's tribes for their fullness."
But with her high clear smile on him answered the mighty Athene, -
Wisely and soberly, tenderly smiled she chiding her father
Even as a mother might rail at her child when he hides and dissembles:
"Zeus, I see and I am not deceived by thy words in my spirit.
We but build forms for thy thought while thou smilest down high o'er our toiling;
Even as men are we tools for thee, who are thy children and dear ones.

¹straight

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All this life is thy sport and thou workst like a boy at his engines
Making a toil of the game and a play of the serious labour.
Then to that play thou callest us wearing a sombre visage,
This consulting, that to our wills confiding, O Ruler;
Choosing thy helpers, hastened by those whom thou lurest to oppose thee
Guile thou usest with gods as with mortals, scheming, deceiving,
And at the wrath and the love thou hast prompted laughest in secret.
So we too who are sisters and enemies, lovers and rivals,
Fondled and baffled in turn obey thy will and thy cunning,
I, thy girl of war, and the rosy-white Aphrodite.
Always we served but thy pleasure since our immortal beginnings,
Always each other we helped by our play and our wrestlings and quarrels.
This too I know that I pass preparing the paths of Apollo
And at the end as his sister and slave and bride I must sojourn
Rapt to his courts of mystic light and unbearable brilliance.
Was I not ever condemned since my birth from the toil of thy musings
Seized like a lyre in my body to sob and to laugh out his music,
Shake as a leaf in his fierceness and leap as a flame in his splendours?
So must I dwell overpowered and so must I labour subjected
Robbed of my loneliness pure and coerced in my radiant freedom,
Now whose clearness and pride are the sovereign joy of thy creatures.
Such the reward that thou keepst for my labour obedient always.
Yet I work and I do thy will, for 'tis mine, O my father."
Proud of her ruthless lust of thought and action and battle,-
Swift-footed rose the daughter of Zets from her sessions immortal:
Breasts of the morning unveiled in a purity awful and candid,
Head of the mighty Dawn, the goddess Pallas Athene!
Strong and rapacious she swooped on the world as her prey and her booty,
Down from the courts of the Mighty descending, darting on Ida.
Dire she descended, a god in her reason, a child in her longings,
Joy and woe to the world that is given to the whims of the child-god
Greedy for rule and play and the minds of men and their doings!
So with her aegis scattering light o'er the heads of the nations
Shining-eyed in her boyish beauty severe and attractive
Came to the fields of the Troad, came to the fateful warfare,
Veiled, the goddess calm and pure in her luminous raiment
Zoned with beauty and strength. Rejoicing, spurring the fighters
Close o'er Odysseus she stood and clear-eyed governed the battle.
Zeus to Hephaestus next, the Cyclopean toiler
Turned, Hephaestus the strong-souled, priest and king and a bond-slave,

Page - 507

Servant of men in their homes and their workshops, servant of Nature,
He who has built these worlds and kindles the fire for a mortal.
"Thou, my son, art obedient always. Wisdom is with thee,
Therefore thou know'st and obeyest. Submission is wisdom and knowledge;
He who is blind revolts and he who is limited struggles :
Strife is not for the infinite; wisdom observes to accomplish.
Troy and her sons and her works are thy food today, 0 Hephaestus."
And to his father the Toiler answered, the silent Seer:
"Yes, I obey thee, my Father, and That which than thou is more mighty;
Even as thou obeyest by rule, so I by my labour.
Now must I heap the furnace, now must I toil at the smithy,
I who have flamed on the altar of sacrifice helping the sages.
I am the Cyclops, the lamester, who once was pure and a high-priest.
Holy the pomp of my flames ascendent from pyre and from altar
Robed men's souls for their heavens and my smoke was a pillar to Nature.
Though I have burned in the sight of the sage and the heart of the hero,
Now is no nobler hymn for my ear than the clanging of metal,
Breath of human greed and the dolorous pant of the engines.
Still I repine not, but toil; for to toil was I yoked by my Maker.
I am your servant, O Gods, and his of whom you are servants."
But to the Toiler Zeus replied, to the servant of creatures:
"What is the thought thou hast uttered betrayed by thy speech, O Hephaestus?
True is it earth shall grow as a smithy, the smoke of the furnace
Fill men's eyes and their souls shall be stunned with the clang of the hammers,
Yet in the end there is rest on the peak of a labour accomplished.
Nor shall the might of the thinker be quelled by that iron oppression,
Nor shall the soul of the warrior despair in the darkness triumphant,
For when the night shall be deepest, dawn shall increase on the mountains
And in the heart of the worst the best shall be born by my wisdom.
Pallas thy sister shall guard man's knowledge fighting the earth-smoke.
Thou to art mighty to live through the clamour even as Apollo.
Work then, endure; expect from the Silence an end and thy wages."
So King Hephaestus arose and passed from the courts of his father;
Down upon earth he came with his lame omnipotent motion;
And with uneven steps absorbed and silent the Master
Worked employed mid the wheels of the cars as a smith in his smithy,
But it was death and bale that he forged, not the bronze and the iron.
Stark, like fire obscured by its smoke, through the spear-casts he laboured
Helping Ajax' war and the Theban and Phocian fighters.

Page - 508

Zeus to his grandiose helper next, who proved and unmoving,
Calm in her greatness waited the mighty command, of her husband:
“Hera, sister and spouse, what my will is thou knowest, O consort.
One are our blood and our hearts, nor the thought for the words of the speaker
Waits, but each other we know and ourselves and the Vast and the heavens,
Life and all between and all beyond and the ages.
That which Space not knows nor Time, we have known, O my sister.
Therefore our souls are one soul and our minds become mirrors of oneness.
Go then and do my will, O thou mighty one, burning down Troya."
Silent she rose from the seats of the Blissful, Hera majestic,
And with her flowing garment and mystical zone through the spaces
Haloed came like the moon on an evening of luminous silence
Down upon Ida descending, a snow-white swan on the greenness,
Down upon Ida the mystic haunted by footsteps immortal
Ever since out of the Ocean it rose and lived gazing towards heaven.
There on a peak of the mountains alone with the sea and the azure
Voiceless and mighty she paused¹like a thought on the summits of being
Clasped by all heaven; the winds at play in her gust-scattered raiment
Sported insulting her gracious strength with their turbulent sweetness,
Played with their mother and queen; but she stood absorbed and unheeding,
Mute, with her sandalled foot for a moment thrilling the grasses,
Dumbly adored by a soul in the mountains, a thought in the rivers,
Roared to loud by her lions. The voice of the cataracts falling
Entered her soul profound and it heard eternity's rumour.
Silent its gaze immense contained the wheeling of aeons.
Huge-winged through Time flew her thought and its grandiose vast revolutions
Turned and returned. So musing her timeless creative spirit,
Master of Time its instrument, grieflessly hastening forward
Parted with greatnesses dead and summoned new strengths from their stables;
Maned they came to her call and filled with their pacings the future.
Calm, with the vision satisfied, thrilled by the grandeurs within her,
Down in a billow of whiteness and gold and delicate raiment
Gliding the daughter of Heaven came to the earth that received her
Glad of the tread divine and bright with her more than with sunbeams.
King Agamemnon she found and smiling on Sparta's levies
Mixed unseen with the far-glinting spears of the haughty Mycenae.
Then to the Mighty who tranquil abode and august in his regions

¹stood

Page - 509

Zeus, while his gaze over many forms and high-seated godheads
Passed like a swift-fleeing eagle over the peaks and the glaciers
When to his eyrie he flies alone through the vastness and silence:
"Artemis, child of my loins and you, O legioned immortals,
All you have heard. Descend, O ye gods, to your sovereign stations,
Labour rejoicing whose task is joy and your bliss is creation;
Shrink from no act that Necessity asks from your luminous natures.
Thee I have given no part in the years that come, O my daughter,
Huntress swift of the worlds who with purity all things pursuest.
Yet not less is thy portion intended than theirs who o'erpass thee:
Helped are the souls that wait more than strengths soon fulfilled and exhausted.
Archeress, brilliance, wait thine hour from the speed of the ages."
So they departed, Artemis leading lightning-tasselled.
Ancient Themis remained and awful Dis and Ananke.
Then mid these last of the gods who shall stand when all others have perished,
Zeus to the Silence obscure under iron brows of that goddess, -
Griefless, unveiled was her visage, dire and unmoved and eternal:
"Thou and I, O Dis, remain and our sister Ananke.
That which the joyous hearts of our children, radiant heaven-moths
Flitting mid flowers of sense for the honey of thought, have not captured,
That which Poseidon forgets mid the pomp and the roar of his waters,
We three keep in our hearts. By the Light that I watch for unsleeping,
By thy tremendous consent to the silence and darkness, O Hades,
By her delight renounced and the prayers and the worship of mortals
Making herself as an engine of God without bowels or vision, -
Yet in that engine are only heart-beats, yet is her riddle
Only Love that is veiled and pity that suffers and slaughters,
We three are free from ourselves, O Dis, and free from each other.
Do then, O King of the Night, observe then with Time for thy servant
Not my behest, but What she and thou and I are for ever."
Mute the Darkness sat like a soul unmoved through the aeons,
Then came a voice from the silence of Dis, from the night there came wisdom.
"Yes, I have chosen and that which I chose I endure, O Cronion, -
Though to the courts of the gods I come as a threat and a shadow,
Even though none to their counsels call me, none to their pastime,
None companions me willingly; even thy daughter, my consort,
Trembling whom once from our sister Demeter I plucked like a blossom¹

Torn from Sicilian² fields, while Fate reluctant, consenting,

¹flower ²Enna's

Page - 510

Bowed her head, lives but by her gasps of the sun and the azure;
Stretched are her hands to the light and she seeks for the clasp of her mother.
I, I am Night and her reign and that of which Night is a symbol.
All to me comes, even thou shalt come to me, brilliant Cronion.
All here exists by me whom all walk fearing and shunning;
He who shuns not, He am I and thou and Ananke.
All things I take to my bosom that Life may be swift in her voyage;
For out of death is Life and not by birth and her motions
And behind Night is light and not in the sun and his splendours.
Troy to the Night I will gather a wreath for my shadows, O grower.”
So in his arrogance dire the vast invincible Death-god
Triumphing passed out of heaven with Themis and silent Ananke.
Zeus alone in the spheres of his bliss, in his kingdom of brilliance
Sat divine and alarmed; for even the gods in their heavens
Scarce shall live who have gazed on the unveiled face of Ananke,
Heard the accents dire of the Darkness that waits for the ages.
Awful and dull grew his eyes and mighty and still grew his members,
Back from his nature he drew to the passionless peaks of the spirit,
Throned where it dwells for ever uplifted and silent and changeless
Far beyond living and death, beyond Nature and ending of Nature.
There for a while he dwelt veiled, protected from Dis and his greatness;
Then to the works of the world he returned and the joy of his musings.
Life and the blaze of the mighty soul that he was of God's making
Dawned again in the heavenly eyes and the majestied semblance.
Comforted heaven he beheld, to the green of the earth was attracted.
But through this Space unreal, but through these worlds that are shadows
Went the awful Three. None saw them pass, none felt them.
Only in the heavens was a tread as of death, in the air was a winter,
Earth oppressed moaned long like a woman striving with anguish.
Ida saw them not, but her grim lions cowered in their caverns,
Ceased for a while on her slopes the eternal laughter of fountains.
Over the ancient ramparts of Dardanus' high-roofed city
Darkening her victor domes and her gardens of life and its sweetness
Silent they came. Unseen and unheard was the dreadful arrival.
Troy and her gods dreamed secure in the moment flattered by sunlight.
Dim to the citadel high they arrived and their silence invaded
Pa1las' marble shrine where stern and white in her beauty,
Armed on her pedestal, trampling the prostrate image of darkness
Mighty Athene's statue guarded imperial Troya.

Page - 511

Dim and vast they entered in. Then through all the great city
Huge a rushing sound was heard from her gardens and places
And in their musings her seers as they strove with night and with error
And in the fane of Apollo Laocoon torn by his visions
Heard aghast the voice of Troy's deities fleeing from Troya,
Saw the flaming lords of her households drive in a death-rout
Forth from her ancient halls and their noble familiar sessions.
Ghosts of her splendid centuries wailed on the wings of the doom-blast.
Moaning the Dryads fled and his Naiads passed from Scamander
Leaving the world to deities dumb of the clod and the earth-smoke,
And from their tombs and their shrines the shadowy Ancestors faded.
Filled was the air with their troops and the sound of a vast lamentation.
Wailing they went, lamenting mortality's ages of greatness
Ruthless Anake's deeds and the mortal conquests of Hades.
Then in the fane Palladian the shuddering priests of Athene
Entered the darkened shrine and saw on the suffering marble
Shattered Athene's mighty statue prostrate as conquered,
But on its pedestal rose o'er the unhurt image of darkness
Awful shapes, a Trinity dim and dire unto mortals.
Dumb they fell down on the earth and the life-breath was slain in their bosoms
And in the noon there was night. And Apollo passed out of Troya.

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