Page:Aeneid (Conington 1866).djvu/83

Who once o'er land and peoples proud
Sat, while before him Asia bowed:
Now on the shore behold him dead,
A nameless trunk, a trunkless head.

O then I felt, as ne'er before,
Chill horror to my bosom's core.
I seemed my aged sire to see,
Beholding Priam, old as he,
Grasp out his life: before my eyes
Forlorn Creusa seemed to rise,
Our palace, sacked and desolate,
And young Iulus, left to fate.
Then, looking round, the place I eyed,
To see who yet were at my side.
Some by the flames were swallowed: some
Had leapt to earth: the end was come.

I stood alone, when lo! I mark
In Vesta's temple crouching dark
The traitress Helen: the broad blaze
Gives me full light, as round I gaze.
She, shrinking from the Trojans' hate
Made frantic by their city's fate,
Nor dreading less the Danaan sword,
The vengeance of her injured lord,—
She, Troy's and Argos' common fiend,
Sat cowering, by the altar screened.
My blood was fired: fierce passion woke
To quit Troy's fall by one sure stroke.
'What? to Mycenæ shall she go,
A conqueress, in a pageant show,
See home, sire, children, spouse again
With Phygian menials in her train?
Good Priam slaughtered? Troy no more?
The Dardan plains afloat with gore?