She gave him a mantle so bright, so bright,
Her hands wove long ago:
“Pardy,” she said, “he will love the lad
That I have engirded so.”
Lord Paris lay in a chamber dark,
Apart from his Grecian wife:
He saw the very comeliest lad
He had seen in all his life.
He raised him up from his couch of gold,
He spoke the boy full fair;
Ay me, and spied the mantle bright
That girt his shoulder there.
“Some trifle,” quoth he, “she wove long syne
For her Grecian husband true;
And this young lad that wears it now,
He shall it dearly rue.”
With that he rushed upon the lad,
He aimed a deadly blow:
The straight young limbs on the floor lay dead,
And life’s blood ran therefro.
Then up and spake the Lady Helen,
“Lord Paris, now what have you done?
The mantle I wove long syne for you,
And this was your sweet young son.”
III.
They told his lone mother on Ida hill,
At the setting of the sun:
Never a sigh nor a shriek she utter’d,—
Of mother’s tears there was none.
She looked with no word out over the sea,
Then when the day was done,—
“O gods! come never more help from me
To the slayer of my young son!”
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They buried the boy by salt-sea shore,
Waves came soothing his sleep;
Lord Paris at eventide wander’d forth,
And laid him down there to weep.
Lame Philoctetès bent his bow—
Full well might he see him there lie—
Said, “Greet now brave Hector, Lord Paris, below,
For this hour thou shalt die.”
He smote him right into the traitor heel,
Smote him there as he lay:
“Now bear me to Ida,” said Lord Paris,
“With all the speed ye may.
The lady Œnone hath cunning and skill,
Never leech so mighty as she;
And if to save me she but will,
This arrow is harmless to me.”
But the gods had heard her bitter prayer,
Then when the day was done:
And good came never more forth from her
To the slayer of her young son.
She look’d on him dying—the shepherd she knew—
And then she look’d on him dead:
“A false false-hearted man he was,
But he was fair,” she said.
When the stars began to look out from heaven,
A corpse by his side she lay:
And down Scamander two silent ghosts
Slode into the evening gray.
H. M. M.
