The Portable Roman Reader (Portable Library) (34 page)

And now from Tenedos set free
The Greeks are sailing on the sea,
Bound for the shore where erst they lay,
Beneath the still moon’s friendly ray:
When in a moment leaps to sight
On the king’s ship the signal light,
And Sinon, screened by partial fate,
Unlocks the pine-wood prison’s gate.
The horse its charge to air restores,
And forth the armed invasion pours.
Thessander, Sthenelus, the first,
Slide down the rope: Ulysses curst,
Thoas and Acamas are there,
And great Pelides’ youthful heir,
Machaon, Menelaus, last
Epeus, who the plot forecast.
They seized the city, buried deep
In floods of revelry and sleep,
Cut down the warders of the gates,
And introduce their banded mates.

 

 

It was the hour when Heaven gives rest
To weary man, the first and best:
Lo, as I slept, in saddest guise,
The form of Hector seemed to rise,
Full sorrow gushing from his eyes:
All torn by dragging at the car,
And black with gory dust of war,
As once on earth—his swoln feet bored,
And festering from the inserted cord.
Ah! what a sight was there to view!
How altered from the man we knew,
Our Hector, who from day’s long toil
Comes radiant in Achilles’ spoil,
Or with that red right hand, which casts
The fires of Troy on Grecian masts!
Blood-clotted hung his beard and hair,
And all those many wounds were there,
Which on his gracious person fell
Around the walls he loved so well.
Methought I first the chief addressed,
With tears like his, and laboring breast:
“0 daystar of Dardanian land!
O faithful heart, unconquered hand!
What means this lingering? from what shore
Comes Hector to his home once more?
Ah! since we saw you, many a woe
Has brought your friends, your country low;
And weary eyes and aching brow
Are ours that look upon you now!
What cause has marred that clear calm mien,
Or why those wounds, unclosed and green?”
He answers not, nor recks him aught
Of those the idle quests I sought;
But with a melancholy sigh,
“Ah, goddess-born,” he warns me, “fly!
Escape these flames: Greece holds the walls;
Proud Ilium from her summit falls.
Think not of king’s or country’s claims:
Country and king, alas! are names:
Could Troy be saved by hands of men,
This hand had saved her then, e‘en then.
The gods of her domestic shrines
That country to your care consigns:
Receive them now, to share your fate:
Provide them mansions strong and great,
The city’s walls, which Heaven has willed
Beyond the seas you yet shall build.”
He said, and from the temple brings
Dread Vesta, with her holy things,
Her awful fillets, and the fire
Whose sacred embers ne’er expire.

 

Meantime throughout the city grow
The agonies of wildering woe:
And more and more, though deep in shade
My father’s palace stood embayed,
The tumult rises on the ear,
And clashing armor hurtles fear.
I start from sleep, the roof ascend,
And with quick heed each noise attend.
E‘en as, while southern winds conspire,
On standing harvests falls the fire,
Or as a mountain torrent spoils
Field, joyous crop, and oxen’s toils,
And sweeps whole woods: the swain spell-bound
Hears from a rock the unwonted sound.
0, then I saw the tale was true:
The Danaan fraud stood clear to view.
Thy halls already, late so proud,
Deiphobus, to fire have bowed:
Ucalegon has caught the light:
Sigeum’s waves gleam broad and bright.
Then come the clamor and the blare,
And shouts and clarions rend the air:
I clutch my arms with reeling brain,
But reason whispers, arms are vain:
Yet still I burn to raise a power,
And, rallying, muster at the tower:
Fury and wrath within me rave,
And tempt me to a warrior’s grave.

 

Lo! Panthus, ‘scaped from death by flight
Priest of Apollo on the height,
His gods, his grandchild at his side,
Makes for my door with frantic stride—
“Ha! Othrys’ son, how goes the fight?
What forces muster at the height?”
I spoke: he heaves a long-drawn breath:
“’Tis come, our fated day of death.
We have been Trojans: Troy has been:
She sat, but sits no more, a queen:
Stem Jove an Argive rule proclaims:
Greece holds a city wrapt in flames.
There in the bosom of the town
The tall horse rains invasion down,
And Sinon, with a conqueror’s pride
Deals fiery havoc far and wide.
Some keep the gates, as vast a host
As ever left Mycenæ’s coast:
Some block the narrows of the street,
With weapons threatening all they meet:
The stark sword stretches o‘er the way,
Quick-glancing, ready drawn to slay,
While scarce our sentinels resist,
And battle in the flickering mist.”
So, stirred by Heaven and Othrys’ son,
Forth into flames and spears I run,
Where yells the war-fiend, and the cries
Of slayer and slain invade the skies.
Bold Rhipeus links him to my side,
And Epytus, in arms long tried:
And Hypanis and Dymas hail
And join us in the moonbeam pale,
With young Corœbus, Mygdon’s child,
Who came to Troy with yearning wild
Cassandra’s love to gain,
And, prompt to yield a kinsman’s aid,
His troop with Priam’s host arrayed:
Ah wretch, whom his demented maid
Had warned, but warned in vain!

 

So, when I saw them round me form,
And knew their blood was pulsing warm,
I thus began: “Brave spirits, wrought
To noblest temper, all for nought,
If desperate venture ye desire,
Ye see our lost estate:
Gone from each fane, each secret shrine,
Are those who made this realm divine:
The town ye aid is wrapped in fire:
Come, rush we on our fate.
No safety may the vanquished find
Till hope of safety be resigned.”
So valour grew to madness. Then,
Like gaunt wolves rushing from their den,
Whom lawless hunger’s sullen growl
Drives forth into the night to prowl,
The while, with jaws all parched and black,
Their famished whelps expect them back,
Amid the volley and the foe,
With death before our eyes, we go
On through the town, while darkness spreads
Its hollow covert o‘er our heads.
What witness could recount aright
The woes, the carnage of that night,
Or make his tributary sighs
Keep measure with our agonies?
An ancient city topples down
From broad-based heights of old renown:
There in the street confusedly strown
Lie age and helplessness o’erthrown,
Block up the entering of the doors,
And cumber Heaven’s own temple-floors.
Nor only Teucrian lives expire:
Sometimes the spark of generous fire
Revives in vanquished hearts again,
And Danaan victors swell the slain.
Dire agonies, wild terrors swarm,
And Death glares grim in many a form.

First, with a train of Danaan spears,
Androgeos in our path appears:
He deems us comrades of his own,
And hails us thus with friendly tone:
“Bestir you, gallants! why so slack?
See here, while others spoil and sack
The burning town, your tardy feet
But now are coming from the fleet!”
He said: the vague replies we make
Reveal at once his dire mistake:
He sees him fallen among the toils,
And voice and foot alike recoils.
As trampling through the thorny brake
The heedless traveller stirs a snake,
And in a sudden fear retires
From that fierce head, those gathering spires,
E‘en so Androgeos at the sight
Was shrinking back in palsied fright.
We mass our arms, and close them round:
Surprised, and ignorant of the ground,
Their scattered ranks we breathless lay,
And Fortune crowns our first essay.
Flashed with wild joy, Corœbus cries,
“See Fortune beckoning from the skies!
When she to safety points the way,
What can be better than obey?
Come, change we bucklers, and advance
Each with a Grecian cognizance.
Who questions, when with foes we deal,
If craft or courage guides the steel?
Themselves shall give us arms to wield.”
He speaks, and from Androgeos tears
His plumy helm and figured shield,
Girds on an Argive sword, and wears.
And Rhipeus, Dymas, and the rest
Soon in the new-won spoils are dressed.
Mixed with the Greeks, we pass unknown,
’Neath heavenly favors not our own,
Wage many a combat in the gloom,
And many a Greek send down to doom.
Some seek the vessels and the shore:
Some, smit with fear more low,
Climb the huge horse, and hide once more
Within the womb they know.
Alas! a mortal may not lean
On Heaven, when Heaven averts its mien.

 

Ah see! the Priameian fair,
Cassandra, by her streaming hair,
Is dragged from Pallas’ shrine,
Her wild eyes raised to Heaven in vain;
Her eyes, alas! for cord and chain
Her tender hands confine.
Corœbus brooked not such a sight,
But plunged infuriate in the fight.
We follow him, as blindly rash,
And, forming, on the spoilers dash:
When from the summit of the fane,
Or ere we deem, a murderous rain
Of Trojan darts our force o‘erwhelms,
Misguided by those Argive helms.
Then, groaning deep their prey to lose,
The rallied Danaans round us close:
Fell Ajax and the Atridan pair,
And all Thessalia’s host were there:
As when the tempest sounds alarms,
And winds conflicting rush to arms,
Notus and Zephyr join the war,
And Eurus in his orient car:
The lashed woods howl: hoar Nereus raves,
And troubles all his realm of waves.
They too, whom erst in dusk of night
Our cunning practice turned to flight,
Come forth: our lying arms they know,
And in our tones perceive a foe.
At once they crush us, swarm on swarm:
And first beneath Peneleos’ arm,
The warlike goddess’ shrine before,
Corœbus welters in his gore.
Then Rhipeus dies: no purer son
Troy ever bred, more jealous none
Of sacred right: Heaven’s will be done.
Dymas and Hypanis are slain,
By comrades cruelly mista’en;
Nor pious deed, nor Phoebus’ wreath,
Could save thee, Panthus, from thy death.
Ye embers of expiring Troy,
Ye funeral flames of all my joy,
Bear witness, in your dying glow,
I shunned nor dart nor fronting foe,
And had it been my fate to bleed
My hand had earned the doom decreed.
Thence forced, to other scenes we flee,
Pelias and Iphitus with me,
This laden with his years and slow,
That halting from Ulysses’ blow:
For hark! the growing tumult calls
For rescue to the palace halls.

 

0, there a giant battle raged!
Who saw it sure had thought
No war in Troy was elsewhere waged,
No deaths beside were wrought:
So fierce the fray our eyes that met,
The Danaans streaming to the roof,
And every gate by foes beset,
Screened by a penthouse javelin-proof.
Close to the walls the ladders cling:
From step to step the assailants spring,
E‘en by the doors: a shield enfolds
Their left: their right a corbel holds.
The Dardans, reckless in despair,
The turrets and the roofs uptear
(E’en to such weapons Fortune drives
Brave patriots, struggling for their lives),
And hurl the gilded beams below,
The pride of ages long ago;
While others on the threshold stand,
And guard the entry, sword in hand,
My heart leaps up, the halls to save,
And help the vanquished to be brave.

 

A secret postern-gate was there,
Which oped behind a thoroughfare
Through Priam’s courts: in happier day
Andromache would pass that way
Alone, to greet the royal pair,
And lead with her her youthful heir.
By this the palace roof I gain,
Whence our poor Trojans, all in vain,
Were showering down their missile rain.
With sheer descent, a turret high
Rose from the roof into the sky,
Whence curious gazers might look down
And see the camp, the fleet, the town:
This, where the flooring timbers join
The stronger stone, we undermine
And tumble o‘er: it falls along,
Down crashing on the assailant throng:
But other Danaans fill their place,
And darts and stones still rain apace.

Full in the gate see Pyrrhus blaze,
A meteor, shooting steely rays:
So flames a serpent into light,
On poisonous herbage fed,
Which late in subterranean night
Through winter lay as dead:
Now from its ancient weeds undressed
Invigorate and young,
Sunward it rears its glittering breast
And darts its three-forked tongue.
There at his side Automedon,
True liegeman both to sire and son,
And giant Periphas, and all
The Seyrian youth assail the wall
And firebrands roofward dart:
Himself the first with two-edged axe
The brazen-plated doors attacks,
And makes their hinges start:
Now through the heart of oak he drives
His weapon, and a loophole rives.
There stands revealed the house within,
Where the long hall retires:
The stately privacy is seen
Of Priam and his sires,
And on the threshold guards appear
In warlike pomp of shield and spear.

 

But far within the palace swarms
With tumult and confused alarms:
The deep courts wail with woman’s cries:
The clamour strikes the spangled skies.
Pale matrons run from place to place,
And clasp the doors in wild embrace.
Strong as his father, Pyrrhus strains,
Nor bar nor guard his force sustains:
The hacked door reels ‘neath blow on blow,
Breaks from its hinges, and lies low.
Force wins her footing: in they rush,
The Danaan hordes, the foremost crush
And deluge with an armed tide
The spacious level far and wide.
Less fierce when, breaking from its bounds,
The water surges o’er the mounds,
Down pours it, tumbling in a heap,
O‘er all the fields with headlong sweep,
And whirls before it fold and sheep.
These eyes beheld fell Pyrrhus there
Intoxicate with gore,
Beheld the curst Atridan pair
Within the sacred door,
Beheld pale Hecuba, and those
The brides her hundred children chose,
And dying Priam at the shrine
Staining the hearth he made divine.
Those fifty nuptial chambers fair,
That promised many a princely heir.
Those pillared doors in pride erect,
With gold and spoils barbaric decked,
Lie smoking on the ground: the Greek
Is potent, where the fires are weak.

 

Perhaps you ask of Priam’s fate:
He, when he sees his town o‘erthrown,
Greeks bursting through his palace gate
And thronging chambers once his own,
His ancient armor, long laid by,
Around his palsied shoulders throws,
Girds with a useless sword his thigh,
And totters forth to meet his foes.
Within the mansion’s central space,