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vv. 860–890. I lived while this man lay at Ilion.

That any woman thus should sit alone

In a half-empty house, with no man near,

Makes her half-blind with dread! And in her ear

Alway some voice of wrath; now messengers

Of evil; now not so; then others worse,

Crying calamity against mine and me.

Oh, had he half the wounds that variously

Came rumoured home, his flesh must be a net,

All holes from heel to crown! And if he met

As many deaths as I met tales thereon,

Is he some monstrous thing, some Gêryon

Three-souled, that will not die, till o'er his head,

Three robes of earth be piled, to hold him dead?

Aye, many a time my heart broke, and the noose

Of death had got me; but they cut me loose.

It was those voices alway in mine ear.

For that, too, young Orestes is not here

Beside me, as were meet, seeing he above

All else doth hold the surety of our love;

Let not thy heart be troubled. It fell thus:

Our loving spear-friend took him, Strophius

The Phocian, who forewarned me of annoy

Two-fronted, thine own peril under Troy,

And ours here, if the rebel multitude

Should cast the Council down. It is men's mood

Alway, to spurn the fallen. So spake he,

And sure no guile was in him.

But for me,

The old stormy rivers of my grief are dead

Now at the spring; not one tear left unshed.

Mine eyes are sick with vigil, endlessly