Around whose brow such martial graces shine,
So tall, so awful, and almost divine?
Though some of larger stature tread the green,
None match his grandeur and exalted mien:
He seems a monarch and his country's pride."
Thus ceased the king, and thus the fair replied:
"Before thy presence, father, I appear
With conscious shame and reverential fear.
Ah! had I died, ere to these walls I fled,
False to my country, and my nuptial bed,
My brothers, friends, and daughter left behind,
False to them all, to Paris only kind!
For this I mourn, till grief or dire disease
Shall waste the form whose crime it was to please!
The king of kings, Atrides, you survey,
Great in the war, and great in arts of sway:[1]
My brother once, before my days of shame:
And oh! that still he bore a brother's name!"
With wonder Priam viewed the godlike man,
Extolled the happy prince, and thus began:
"O blest Atrides! born to prosperous fate,
Successful monarch of a mighty state!
How vast thy empire! Of yon matchless train
What numbers lost, what numbers yet remain!
In Phrygia once were gallant armies known,
In ancient time, when Otreus filled the throne;
When godlike Mygdon led their troops of horse,
And I, to join them, raised the Trojan force:
Against the manlike Amazons we stood,
And Sangar's stream ran purple with their blood.
But far inferior those, in martial grace
And strength of numbers, to this Grecian race."
This said, once more he viewed the warrior-train:
"What's he, whose arms lie scattered on the plain?
Broad is his breast, his shoulders larger spread,
Though great Atrides overtops his head.
Nor yet appear his care and conduct small;
From rank to rank he moves, and orders all,
The stately ram thus measures o'er the ground,
And, master of the flocks, surveys them round."
Then Helen thus: "Whom your discerning eyes
Have singled out, is Ithacus the wise:
A barren island boasts his glorious birth;
His fame for wisdom fills the spacious earth."
Antenor took the word, and thus began:
"Myself, O king, have seen that wondrous man;
When, trusting Jove and hospitable laws,
To Troy he came, to plead the Grecian cause;
- ↑ The favourite verse of Alexander of Macedon.
