Page:Early poems of William Morris.djvu/92



Hearing you sweat to prove All this I know so well; but you have read The siege of Troy?

O! yea, I know it well.

There! they were wrong, as wrong as men could be; For, as I think, they found it such delight To see fair Helen going through their town: Yea, any little common thing she did (As stooping to pick a flower) seem'd so strange, So new in its great beauty, that they said; "Here we will keep her living in this town, Till all burns up together." And so, fought, In a mad whirl of knowing they were wrong; Yea, they fought well, and ever, like a man That hangs legs off the ground by both his hands, Over some great height, did they struggle sore, Quite sure to slip at last; wherefore, take note How almost all men, reading that sad siege, Hold for the Trojans; as I did at least, Thought Hector the best knight a long way: Now Why should I not do this thing that I think, For even when I come to count the gains, I have them my side: men will talk, you know, (We talk of Hector, dead so long agone,) When I am dead, of how this Peter clung To what he thought the right; of how he died,