Was it for this
You flung forth fortune--to ensure him his?
And he made snug at home, we seek our lands
Barer than we left them, with emptier hands,
And some with fewer members, shed that he
Might fare as soft and trim as formerly!
Not so went I adventuring, good friend;
Not so look I this business to have end:
Nay, but I fight to live, not live to fight,
And so will live by day as thou by night,
Sating my eyes with havoc on this race
Of robbers of the hearth; see their strong place
Brought level with the herbage and the weed,
That where they revelled once shrew-mice may feed,
And moles make palaces, and bats keep house.
And if thou art of spleen so slow to rouse
As quit thy score by thieving from a thief
And leave him scatheless else, thou art no chief
For Tydeus' son, who sees no end of strife
But in his own or in his foeman's life."
So he. Then Pyrrhos spake: "By that great shade
Wherein I stand, which thy false Paris made
Who slew my father, think not so to have done
With Troy and Priam; for Peleides' son
Must slake the sword that cries, and still the ghost
Of him that haunts the ingles of this coast,
Murdered and unacquit while that man's father
Liveth."
Then leapt up two, and both together
Cried, "Give us Troy to sack, give us our fill
Of gold and bronze; give us to burn and kill!"
And Aias said, "Are there no women then
In Troy, but only her? And are we men
Or virgins of Athene?" And the dream
Of her who served that dauntless One made gleam
His shifting eyes, and stretcht his fleshy lips
Behind his beard.
Then stood that prince of ships
And shipmen, great Odysseus; with one hand
He held the staff, with one he took command;
And thus in measured tones, with word intent
Upon the deed, fierce but not vehement,
Drave in his dreadful message. At his sight
Clamour died down, even as the wind at night
Falls and is husht at rising of the moon.
"Ye chieftains of Achaia, not so soon
Is strife of ten years rounded to a close,
Neither so are men seated, friends or foes.
For say thus lightly we renounced the meed
Of our long travail, gave so little heed
To our great dead as find in one man's joy
Full recompense for all we've sunk in Troy--
Wives desolate, children fatherless, lands, ge