The Iliad

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2019

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Two heralds now, despatch’d to Troy, invite

The Phrygian monarch to the peaceful rite.

Talthybius hastens to the fleet, to bring

The lamb for Jove, the inviolable king.

Meantime to beauteous Helen, from the skies

The various goddess of the rainbow flies:

(Like fair Laodice in form and face,

The loveliest nymph of Priam’s royal race:)

Her in the palace, at her loom she found;

The golden web her own sad story crown’d,

The Trojan wars she weaved (herself the prize)

And the dire triumphs of her fatal eyes.

To whom the goddess of the painted bow:

“Approach, and view the wondrous scene below!

Each hardy Greek, and valiant Trojan knight,

So dreadful late, and furious for the fight,

Now rest their spears, or lean upon their shields;

Ceased is the war, and silent all the fields.

Paris alone and Sparta’s king advance,

In single fight to toss the beamy lance;

Each met in arms, the fate of combat tries,

Thy love the motive, and thy charms the prize.”

This said, the many-coloured maid inspires

Her husband’s love, and wakes her former fires;

Her country, parents, all that once were dear,

Rush to her thought, and force a tender tear,

O’er her fair face a snowy veil she threw,

And, softly sighing, from the loom withdrew.

Her handmaids, Clymene and Æthra, wait

Her silent footsteps to the Scaean gate.

There sat the seniors of the Trojan race:

(Old Priam’s chiefs, and most in Priam’s grace,)

The king the first; Thymoetes at his side;

Lampus and Clytius, long in council tried;

Panthus, and Hicetaon, once the strong;

And next, the wisest of the reverend throng,

Antenor grave, and sage Ucalegon,

Lean’d on the walls and bask’d before the sun:

Chiefs, who no more in bloody fights engage,

But wise through time, and narrative with age,

In summer days, like grasshoppers rejoice,

A bloodless race, that send a feeble voice.

These, when the Spartan queen approach’d the tower,

In secret own’d resistless beauty’s power:

They cried, “No wonder such celestial charms

For nine long years have set the world in arms;

What winning graces! what majestic mien!

She moves a goddess, and she looks a queen!

Yet hence, O Heaven, convey that fatal face,

And from destruction save the Trojan race.”