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O'er the Gorgopian lake it flashed like lightning

On the sea-beaten cliffs of Megaris;

Woke up the watchman not to spare his fire,

And, gathering in its unexhausted strength,

The long-waving bearded flame from off the cliffs

That overlook the deep Saronian gulf,

As from a mirror streamed. On flashed it; reached

Arachne, our close neighbouring height, and there,

Not unbegotten of that bright fire on Ida,

On sprang it to Atrides' palace-roof.

Such were the laws of those swift beacon-fires:

So flash the torches on from hand to hand

In the holy rite, brightest the first and last.

Such is the proof and sign of victory

Sent by my husband from now captured Troy."

The reader will recognise here the original of Macaulay's "Armada." Indeed that poem gives, better than any translation, the spirit and dash and picturesqueness of the passage; from the kindling of the first beacon on Mount Edgecombe's height,—

Then Clytemnestra describes what she imagines to be the scene in Troy, where the cries of the vanquished, as wives and children weep over the bodies of the slain, are mingled in discord with the shouts of the