Page:Collected poems of Flecker.djvu/245

 Deep honied quiet, miming Death's own peace, Thralled. And my dear spouse, busy all the while Strips the house bare of arms: and my good sword's No longer at my pillow. 'Ready now! In Menelaus! Every door's ajar!' This was her great gift to her old lover, And this her scheme for hushing up old tales! Quick to the end now! They break in my door, With them Ulysses, Crime's High Advocate. Gods, load this on the Greeks,–if the good man Who cries down vengeance be a good man still! But thee alive what hap–tell in thy turn– Brought here? Dost come a plaything of the wave By traveller's chance? Or at the hest divine? What fate's oppression draws thee to these homes Where no sun shines nor any view stands clear? But while they talked, across the pole of heaven. Had swept the Charioteer who drives from Dawn, And dalliance had soon eaten up the dole Of time allotted: so the Sybil warned– "Down comes the night, Æneas: all too fast, We weep the hours away. Here splits the road, Right, to the foot of the big walls of Dis, But the left leads the damned to their deserts In impious Tartary." "But chide no more;" Replied Deiphobus: "I will return My place is in the roll-call of the Dead, Go, Splendour of our Story: grace be thine Beyond our measure." And he turned away. 1914 209