g
That is Hell's triumph. But to come as I
Am now come, laden with deliverance high,
Home to a land of peace and laughing eyes,
And mar all with that fury of the skies
Which made our Greeks curse God--how should this be?
Two enemies most ancient, Fire and Sea,
A sudden friendship swore, and proved their plight
By war on us poor sailors through that night
Of misery, when the horror of the wave
Towered over us, and winds from Strymon drave
Hull against hull, till good ships, by the horn
Of the mad whirlwind gored and overborne,
One here, one there, 'mid rain and blinding spray,
Like sheep by a devil herded, passed away.
And when the blessed Sun upraised his head,
We saw the Aegean waste a-foam with dead,
Dead men, dead ships, and spars disasterful.
Howbeit for us, our one unwounded hull
Out of that wrath was stolen or begged free
By some good spirit--sure no man was he!--
Who guided clear our helm; and on till now
Hath Saviour Fortune throned her on the prow.
No surge to mar our mooring, and no floor
Of rock to tear us when we made for shore.
Till, fled from that sea-hell, with the clear sun
Above us and all trust in fortune gone,
We drove like sheep about our brain the thoughts
Of that lost army, broken and scourged with knouts
Of evil. And, methinks, if there is breath
In them, they talk of us as gone to death--
How else?--and so say we of them! For thee,
Since Menelaues thy first care must be,
If by some word of Zeus, who wills not yet
To leave the old house for ever desolate,
Some ray of sunlight on a far-off sea
Lights him, yet green and living ... we may see
His ship some day in the harbour!--'Twas the word
Of truth ye asked me for, and truth ye have heard!

[_Exit_ HERALD. _The_ CHORUS _take position for the Third Stasimon_.

CHORUS.

(_Surely there was mystic meaning in the name_ HELENA, _meaning which was
fulfilled when she fled to Troy._)

Who was He who found for thee
That name, truthful utterly--
Was it One beyond our vision
Moving sure in pre-decision
Of man's doom his mystic lips?--
Calling thee, the Battle-wed,
Thee, the Strife-encompassed,
HELEN? Yea, in fate's derision,
Hell in cities, Hell in ships,
Hell in hearts of men they knew her,
When the dim and delicate fold
Of her curtains backward rolled,
And to sea, to sea, she threw her
In the West Wind's giant hold;
And with spear and sword behind her
Came the hunters in a flood,
Down the oarblade's viewless