Page:The Life of William Morris.djvu/195

174 here we only catch a last glimpse of Hector as he goes bravely to meet his fate, and with him all the sunlight seems to fade off Troy. The struggle becomes cruel and base on both sides. Paris arms himself again, but like a man in a nightmare.

In what must be the most dolorous arming-song ever written he bids Helen a weary farewell. The lyric, in an altered shape and setting, is well known: recast, and with its sadness turned into a pensive tenderness, it occurs in the tale of "Ogier the Dane," as a song which Ogier hears sung early on a May morning by two young lovers. This is its original form:

Even in the Greek camp there is the same weariness and bitter languor. The homes they have left grow dim and strange: