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eye was fixed, each lip compressed,

When thus began the heroic guest:

'Too cruel, lady, is the pain,

You bid me thus revive again;

How lofty Ilium's throne august

Was laid by Greece in piteous dust,

The woes I saw with these sad eyne,

The deeds whereof large part was mine:

What Argive, when the tale were told,

What Myrmidon of sternest mould,

What foe from Ithaca could hear,

And grudge the tribute of a tear?

Now dews precipitate the night,

And setting stars to rest invite:

Yet, if so keen your zeal to know

In brief the tale of Troy's last woe,

Though memory shrinks with backward start,

And sends a shudder to my heart,

I take the word.

Worn down by wars,

Long beating 'gainst Fate's dungeon-bars,

As year kept chasing year,

The Danaan chiefs, with cunning given

By Pallas, mountain-high to heaven

A giant horse uprear,