ue the wanton in the wild,
Defile the undefiled!
Yet by the oath thou swearedst, standing high
Where piled rocks testify
The holy dust, and from Therapnai's hold
Over the rippling wold
Didst look upon Amyklai's, where sunrise
First dawned in Helen's eyes,
Take up thy tale, good poet, strain thine art
To sing her rendered heart,
Given last to him who loved her first, nor swerved
From loving, but was nerved
To see through years of robbery and shame
Her spirit, a clear flame,
Eloquent of her birthright. Tell his peace,
And hers who at last found ease
In white-arm'd Here, holy husbander
Of purer fire than e'er
To wife gave Kypris. Helen, and Thee sing
In whom her beauties ring,
Fair body of fair mind fair acolyte,
Star of my day and night!

_18th September 1912._

FIRST STAVE

THE DEATH OF ACHILLES

Where Simoeis and Xanthos, holy streams,
Flow brimming on the level, and chance gleams
Betray far Ida through a rended cloud
And hint the awful home of Zeus, whose shroud
The thunder is--'twixt Ida and the main
Behold gray Ilios, Priam's fee, the plain
About her like a carpet; from whose height
The watchman, ten years watching, every night
Counteth the beacon fires and sees no less
Their number as the years wax and duress
Of hunger thins the townsmen day by day--
More than the Greeks kill plague and famine slay.
Here in their wind-swept city, ten long years
Beset and in this tenth in blood and tears
And havocry to fall, old Priam's sons
Guard still their gods, their wives and little ones,
Guard Helen still, for whose fair womanhood
The sin was done, woe wrought, and all the blood
Of Danaan and Dardan in their pride
Shed; nor yet so the end, for Here cried
Shrill on the heights more vengeance on wrong done,
And Greek or Trojan paid it. Late or soon
By sword or bitter arrow they went hence,
Each with their goodliest paying one man's offence.
Goodliest in Troy fell Hector; back to Greek
Then swung the doomstroke, and to Dis the bleak
Must pass great Hector's slayer. Zeus on high,
Hidden from men, held up the scales; the sky
Told Thetis that her son must go the way
He sent Queen Hecuba's--himself must pay,
Himself though young, splendid Achilles' self,
The price of manslaying, with blood for pelf.