e her heart waver. Many she heard,
And much she saw, but knew the King her friend,
Him only since great Hector met his end.
And while so pensive and demure she stood,
With one thin hand just peeping at her hood,
The which close-folded her from head to knee,
Her heart within her bosom hailed her--"Free!
Free from thy thralldom, free to save, to give,
To love, be loved again, and die to live!"
So she--yet who had said, to see her there,
The sweet-faced woman, blue-eyed, still and fair
As windless dawn in some quiet mountain place,
To such a music let her passion race?

Now hath the King his witless welcome paid,
And now invoked the gods, and the cold shade
Which once was Hector; now, being upheld
By two his sons, with shaking hands of eld
The knees of those two carved and gilded youths
He touches while he prays, and praying soothes
The crying heart of Helen. But not so
Kassandra views him pray, that well of woe
Kassandra, she whom Loxias deceived
With gift to see, and not to be believed;
To read within the heart of Time all truth
And see men blindly blunder, to have ruth,
To burn, to cry, "Out, haro!" and be a mock--
Ah, and to know within this gross wood-block
The fate of all her kindred, and her own,
Unthinkable! Now with her terror blown
Upon her face, to blanch it like a sheet,
Now with bare frozen eyes which only greet
The viewless neighbours of our world she strips
The veil and shrieketh Troy's apocalypse:
"Woe to thee, Ilios! The fire, the fire! And rain,
Rain like to blood and tears to drown the plain
And cover all the earth up in a shroud,
One great death-clout for thee, Ilios the proud!
Touch not, handle not----" Outraged then she turned
To Helen--"O thou, for whom Troy shall be burned,
O ruinous face, O breasts made hard with gall,
Now are ye satisfied? Ye shall have all,
All Priam's sons and daughters, all his race
Gone quick to death, hailing thee, ruinous face!"
Her tragic mask she turned upon all men:
"The lion shall have Troy, to make his den
Within her pleasant courts, in Priam's high seat
Shall blink the vulture, sated of his meat;
And in the temples emptied of their Gods
Bats shall make quick the night, and panting toads
Make day a loathing to the light it brings.
Listen! Listen! they floc