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vv. 810–837.

To Argos and the gods of Argolis

All hail, who share with me the glory of this

Home-coming and the vengeance I did wreak

On Priam's City! Yea, though none should speak,

The great gods heard our cause, and in one mood

Uprising, in the urn of bitter blood,

That men should shriek and die and towers should burn,

Cast their great vote; while over Mercy's urn

Hope waved her empty hands and nothing fell.

Even now in smoke that City tells her tale;

The wrack-wind liveth, and where Ilion died

The reek of the old fatness of her pride

From hot and writhing ashes rolls afar.

For which let thanks, wide as our glories are,

Be uplifted; seeing the Beast of Argos hath

Round Ilion's towers piled high his fence of wrath

And, for one woman ravished, wrecked by force

A City. Lo, the leap of the wild Horse

In darkness when the Pleiades were dead;

A mailèd multitude, a Lion unfed,

Which leapt the tower and lapt the blood of Kings!

Lo, to the Gods I make these thanksgivings.

But for thy words: I marked them, and I mind

Their meaning, and my voice shall be behind

Thine. For not many men, the proverb saith,

Can love a friend whom fortune prospereth

Unenvying; and about the envious brain

Cold poison clings, and doubles all the pain

Life brings him. His own woundings he must nurse,

And feels another's gladness like a curse.