Page:Homer - Iliad, translation Pope, 1909.djvu/449

945—993 And by the Immortals e'en in death beloved!

While all my other sons in barbarous bands

Achilles bound, and sold to foreign lands,

This felt no chains, but went, a glorious ghost,

Free, and a hero, to the Stygian coast.

Sentenced, 'tis true, by his inhuman doom,

Thy noble corse was dragged around the tomb;

The tomb of him thy warlike arm had slain;

Ungenerous insult, impotent and vain!

Yet glowest thou fresh with every living grace,

No mark of pain, or violence of face;

Rosy and fair! as Phœbus' silver bow

Dismissed thee gently to the shades below!"

Thus spoke the dame, and melted into tears.

Sad Helen next in pomp of grief appears:

Fast from the shining sluices of her eyes

Fall the round crystal drops, while thus she cries:

"Ah, dearest friend! in whom the gods had joined

The mildest manners with the bravest mind!

Now twice ten years, unhappy years, are o'er

Since Paris brought me to the Trojan shore;

Oh had I perished, ere that form divine

Seduced this soft, this easy heart of mine!

Yet was it ne'er my fate from thee to find

A deed ungentle, or a word unkind:

When others cursed the authoress of their woe,

Thy pity checked my sorrows in their flow:

If some proud brother eyed me with disdain,

Or scornful sister with her sweeping train,

Thy gentle accents softened all my pain.

For thee I mourn; and mourn myself in thee,

The wretched source of all this misery!

The fate I caused, for ever I bemoan;

Sad Helen has no friend, now thou art gone!

Through Troy's wide streets abandoned shall I roam,

In Troy deserted, as abhorred at home!"

So spoke the fair, with sorrow-streaming eye:

Distressful beauty melts each stander-by;

On all around the infectious sorrow grows;

But Priam checked the torrent as it rose:

"Perform, ye Trojans, what the rites require,

And fell the forests for a funeral pyre!

Twelve days nor foes nor secret ambush dread;

Achilles grants these honours to the dead."

He spoke; and at his word the Trojan train

Their mules and oxen harness to the wain,

Pour through the gates, and, felled from Ida's crown,

Roll back the gathered forests to the town.

These toils continue nine succeeding days,