35
BOOK II.
Each eye was fixed, each lip compressed,
When thus began the heroic guest:
'Too cruel, lady, is the pain,
You bid me thus revive again;
How lofty Ilium's throne august
Was laid by Greece in piteous dust,
The woes I saw with these sad eyne,
The deeds whereof large part was mine:
What Argive, when the tale were told,
What Myrmidon of sternest mould,
What foe from Ithaca could hear,
And grudge the tribute of a tear?
Now dews precipitate the night,
And setting stars to rest invite:
Yet, if so keen your zeal to know
In brief the tale of Troy's last woe,
Though memory shrinks with backward start,
And sends a shudder to my heart,
I take the word.
Worn down by wars,
Long beating 'gainst Fate's dungeon-bars,
As year kept chasing year,
The Danaan chiefs, with cunning given
By Pallas, mountain-high to heaven
A giant horse uprear,
