The gift for Pallas’ self ordained,
Dire havoc—grant, ye powers, that first
That fate be his!—on Troy should burst:
But if, in glad procession haled
By those your hands, your walls it scaled,
Then Asia should our homes invade,
And unborn captives mourn the raid.’
Our credence for the perjurer gained,
And tears, wrung out from fraudful eyes,
Made us, e’en us, a villain’s prize,
’Gainst whom not valiant Diomede,
Nor Peleus’ Larissæan seed,
Nor ten years’ fighting could prevail,
Nor navies of a thousand sail.
Our unprophetic souls to bind.
Laocoon, named as Neptune’s priest,
Was offering up the victim beast,
When lo! from Tenedos—I quail,
E’en now, at telling of the tale—
Two monstrous serpents stem the tide,
And shoreward through the stillness glide.
Amid the waves they rear their breasts,
And toss on high their sanguine crests:
The hind part coils along the deep,
And undulates with sinuous sweep.
The lashed spray echoes: now they reach
The inland belted by the beach,
And rolling bloodshot eyes of fire,
Dart their forked tongues, and hiss for ire.
We fly distraught: unswerving they
Toward Laocoon hold their way;
First round his two young sons they wreathe,
And grind their limbs with savage teeth:
Then, as with arms he comes to aid,
The wretched father they invade
And twine in giant folds: twice round
His stalwart waist their spires are wound,
Twice round his neck, while over all
Their heads and crests tower high and tall.
He strains his strength their knots to tear,
While gore and slime his fillets smear,
And to the unregardful skies
Sends up his agonizing cries:
A wounded bull such moaning makes,
When from his neck the axe he shakes,
Ill- aimed, and from the altar breaks.
The twin destroyers take their flight
To Pallas’ temple on the height;
There by the goddess’ feet concealed
They lie, and nestle ’neath her shield.
At once through Ilium’s hapless sons
A shock of feverous horror runs:
All in Laocoon’s death-pangs read
The just requital of his deed,
Who dared to harm with impious stroke
Those ribs of consecrated oak.
‘The image to its fane!’ they cry:
‘So soothe the offended deity.’
Each in the labour claims his share:
The walls are breached, the town laid bare:
Wheels ’neath its feet are fixed to glide,
And round its neck stout ropes are tied:
So climbs our wall that shape of doom,
With battle quickening in its womb,
While youths and maidens sing glad songs,
And joy to touch the harness-thongs.
It comes, and, glancing terror down,
Sweeps through the bosom of the town.
O Ilium, city of my love!
O warlike home of powers above!
Four times ’twas on the threshold stayed:
Four times the armour clashed and brayed.
Yet on we press with passion blind,
All forethought blotted from our mind,
Till the dread monster we install
Within the temple’s tower-built wall.
E’en then Cassandra’s prescient voice
Forewarned us of our fatal choice—
That prescient voice, which Heaven decreed
No son of Troy should hear and heed.
We, careless souls, the city through,
With festal boughs the fanes bestrew,
And in such revelry employ
The last, last day should shine on Troy.
And night ascends from Ocean’s womb,
Involving in her shadow broad
Earth, sky, and Myrmidonian fraud:
And through the city, stretched at will,
Sleep the tired Trojans, and are still.
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 seize the city, buried deep
In floods of revelry and sleep,
Cut down the warders of the gates,
And introduce their banded mates.
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 labouring breast:
‘O daystar of Dardanian land!
O faithful heart, unconquered hand!
What means this
| Previous chapter/page | Back | Home | Email this | Search | Discuss | Bookmark | Next chapter/page |