Page:Aeneid (Conington 1866).djvu/83

Rh Who once o'er land and peoples proud

Sat, while before him Asia bowed:

Now on the shore behold him dead,

A nameless trunk, a trunkless head.

O then I felt, as ne'er before,

Chill horror to my bosom's core.

I seemed my aged sire to see,

Beholding Priam, old as he,

Grasp out his life: before my eyes

Forlorn Creusa seemed to rise,

Our palace, sacked and desolate,

And young Iulus, left to fate.

Then, looking round, the place I eyed,

To see who yet were at my side.

Some by the flames were swallowed: some

Had leapt to earth: the end was come.

I stood alone, when lo! I mark

In Vesta's temple crouching dark

The traitress Helen: the broad blaze

Gives me full light, as round I gaze.

She, shrinking from the Trojans' hate

Made frantic by their city's fate,

Nor dreading less the Danaan sword,

The vengeance of her injured lord,—

She, Troy's and Argos' common fiend,

Sat cowering, by the altar screened.

My blood was fired: fierce passion woke

To quit Troy's fall by one sure stroke.

'What? to Mycenæ shall she go,

A conqueress, in a pageant show,

See home, sire, children, spouse again

With Phygian menials in her train?

Good Priam slaughtered? Troy no more?

The Dardan plains afloat with gore?