s veins clear spirit ran instead,
Which made men reasons and not fired their sprites.
And next Idomeneus of countless fights,
Shrewd leader of the Cretans; by his side
Keen-flashing Diomedes in his pride,
The young, the wild in onset, whose war-shrill,
Next after Peleus' son's, held all Troy still,
And stayed the gray crows at their ravelling
Of dead men's bones. Into debate full fling
Went he, adone with tapping of the foot
And drumming on the board. Had but his suit
Been granted--so he said--the war were done
And Troy a name ere full three years had gone:
For as for Helen and her daintiness,
Troy held a mort of women who no less
Than she could pleasure night when work was over
And men came home ready to play the lover;
And in housework would better her. Let Helen
Be laid by Paris, villain, and dead villain--
Dead long ago if he had taken the field
Instead of Menelaus. Then no shield
Had Kypris' golden body been, acquist
With his sword-arm already, near the wrist!
So Diomedes. Next him sat a man
With all his woe to come, the Lokrian
Aias, son of Oileus, bearded swart,
Pale, with his little eyes, and legs too short
And arms too long, a giant when he sat,
Dwarf else, and in the fight a tiger-cat.
But mark his neighbour, mark him well: to him
Falleth the lot to lay a charge more grim
On woman fair than even Althaia felt
Like lead upon her heartstrings, when she knelt
And blew to flame the brand that held the life
Of her own son; or Procne with the knife,
Who slew and dressed her child to be a meal
To his own father. But this man's thews were steel,
And steely were the nerves about his heart,
As they had need. Mark him, and mark the part
He plays hereafter. Odysseus is his name,
The wily Ithacan, deathless in his fame
And in his substance deathless, since he goes
Immortal forth and back wherever blows
The thunder of thy rhythm, O blind King,
First of the tribe of them with songs to sing,
Fountain of storied music and its end--
For who the poet since who doth not tend
To essay thy leaping measure, or call down
Thy nodded approbation for his crown
And all his wages?
Other chiefs sat there
In order due: as Pyrrhos, very fair
And young, with high bright colour, and the hue
Of eveni