Page:Helen of Troy and Other Poems.djvu/23



ILD flight on flight against the fading dawn The flames' red wings soar upward duskily. This is the funeral pyre and Troy is dead That sparkled so the day I saw it first, And darkened slowly after. I am she Who loves all beauty—yet I wither it. Why have the high gods made me wreak their wrath— Forever since my maidenhood to sow Sorrow and blood about me? Lo, they keep Their bitter care above me even now. It was the gods who led me to this lair, That tho' the burning winds should make me weak, They should not snatch the life from out my lips. Olympus let the other women die; They shall be quiet when the day is done And have no care to-morrow. Yet for me There is no rest. The gods are not so kind To her made half immortal like themselves. It is to you I owe the cruel gift, Leda, my mother, and the Swan, my sire, To you the beauty and to you the bale; For never woman born of man and maid Had wrought such havoc on the earth as I, Or troubled heaven with a sea of flame That climbed to touch the silent whirling stars And blotted out their brightness ere the dawn.