thus the Hierarchy at one
Sits to behold the bitter business done
Which Paris by his luxury bestirred.

But in the city, like a stricken bird
Grieving her desolation and despair,
As voiceless and as lustreless, astare
For imminent Death, Kassandra croucht beneath
Her very doom, herself the bride of Death;
For in the temple's forecourt reared the mass
Of that which was to bring the woe to pass,
And hidden in him both her murderers
Wrung at their nails.
And slow the long day wears
While all the city broods. The chiefs keep house,
Or gather on the wall, or make carouse
To simulate a freedom they feel not;
And at street corners men in shift or plot
Whisper together, or in the market-place
Gather, and peer each other in the face
Furtively, seeking comfort against care;
Whose eyes, meeting by chance, shift otherwhere
In haste. But in the houses, behind doors
Shuttered and barred, the women scrub their floors,
Or ply their looms as busily: for they
Ever cure care with care, and if a day
Be heavy lighten it with heavier task;
And for their griefs wear beauty like a mask,
And answer heart's presaging with a song
On their brave lips, and render right for wrong.
Little, by outward seeming, do they know
Of doom at hand, of fate or blood or woe,
Nor how their children, playing by their knees,
Must end this day of busyness-at-ease
In shrieking night, with clamour for their bread,
And a red bath, and a cold stone for a bed
Under the staring moon.

Now sinks the sun
Blood-red into the heavy sea and dun,
And forth from him, as he were stuck with swords,
Great streams of light go upward. Then the lords
Of havoc and unrest prepare their storms,
And o'er the silent city, vulture forms--
Eris and Enyo, Alke, Ioke,
The biter, the sharp-bitten, the mad, the fey--
Hover and light on pinnacle and tower:
The gray Erinnyes, watchful for the hour
When Haro be the wail. And down the sky
Like a white squall flung Ate with a cry
That sounded like the wind in a ship's shrouds,
As shrill and wild at once. The driving clouds
Surging together, blotted out the sea,
The beached ships, the plain with mound and tree,
And slantwise came the sheeted rain, and fast
The darkness settled i