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.
Flushed 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 favours 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.
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 Phœbus’ 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.
O, 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.
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.
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 Scyrian 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
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