Classic Poem

So Hector fell, and Troy without defence
Looked for Achilles knocking at the gate:
There was no other heart to brave him thence,
The stubborn walls at last must let in fate.

But he, delaying, held away their doom,
For on a bleak hill far across the plain,
Beside his lost friend in the new-built tomb,
Whom Hector slew and for that death was slain,

He grieved, and clasped his knees, and bowed his head,
To hear no sound though night and day went by,
Mourning the friendship and the glory sped,
And after Hector, his own turn to die;

Beholding now the end of mortal things,
He would not lift his armor from the ground,
He would not hear the pleading of the kings
To storm the city and be homeward bound.

Yet he would come at last, Troy knew, and woke
To daily respite and to daily fear,
And wild devices, thin as drifting smoke,
Crossed their dark hour with unconvincing cheer;

So long he tarried when he might have come,
What if the subtle-planning gods intended
Another shift in the apparent doom,
Another Hector, Troy once more defended?

Two only undeluded met the woes
Long fated, and the approaching night of dread;
Andromache, who when the wailing rose
Was weaving in her house a purple web,

And she had called for water on the fire,
That Hector, soon returning after toil,
Might wash away the battle and the mire,
And cool the wounds with delicate-scented oil;

Even then she heard the sudden cry of death;
She said, " It was his mother's voice I heard, "
And hurried to the walls with choking breath,
To the pale throng that, pitifully stirred,

Made room, with boding silence on their lips,
And there she saw the chariot on the plain,
Swift horses dragging Hector to the ships;
She had seen this, she could not hope again:

And Priam, the sad king, who in the dark
Crept to Achilles and humbled his white head,
And brought again the body, torn and stark,
And gave it peace with the untroubled dead —

He too was hopeless and would live no longer,
But being king, he staggered to the close,
His desperate strength by each despair made stronger,
And he was patient when fresh hopes arose.

Then out of Thermodon the huntress came,
The maiden warrior with her slender grace,
With her two spears, and her mysterious fame
That no foe lived before her cold, clear face.

Quietly she dawned as a dream doubly-bright
That unforetold we dream, on Priam's town,
Or as a moon that noiseless in the night
Rises with gradual silver and looks down.

She had no need to tell them, they beheld
What errand she was on — she was their lives,
Their city, and their safety, and she held
Death for Achilles in those gleaming knives.

They were as perished travelers in a waste,
Who see above salt grasses, parched and thinned,
A cloud-like thing — is it a cloud? — and taste
Cool dampness coming on a ghostly wind.

King Priam watched this frenzy seize the throng,
Studying her bright youth with tired eyes,
And heard a voice beside him — " They are wrong,
She is no goddess walking in disguise;

" So slight a girl my Hector once could hold
Shoulder-high with his hand, and feel no weight,
Yet he for all his strength was over-bold;
Priam, you will not send her to her fate? "

" No goddess, " said the king, " yet she might prove
A rescue, and this miracle might be,
That first a woman bound us with her love,
And at the last a woman set us free.

" But she will try her fortune, come what may;
She thinks to conquer, let the gods decide;
Were she my child, I would not bid her stay,
So many children have gone forth and died. "

" O Priam, lingering shadow, hardly living,
Has the long slaughter dulled its own despair?
Once the fresh sight of blood was torture-giving;
Now after so much battle can you bear

" This long procession of lost youth, and take
The sacrifice in unabating flood
Poured out, poured vainly, for the city's sake?
O King, they are your city, and their blood

" Is the red heart of Troy that ebbs away!
Rather a fury and a cruel wrath
Than this accepted horror, day by day;
Rather the storm that scorches in its path,
" Walls scattered to confusion, stone from stone,
Old folk with bleeding lips struck cold and mute,
The skulls of children cloven to the bone,
And frantic women captive to the brute —

" Agonies that consume and then pass by —
Than horror stretched to habit, and the skill
To formulate another's right to die,
Or utter the illusion that will kill. "

" Daughter, I love not war, though war has made
Sorrow indeed my habit, nor love to see
Youth come so straight on death — how I have prayed
For my own end, and yet it will not be!

" Yet there is medicine in these perishings,
A kind of mercy in so many woes;
Even in peace the great departing brings
Anguish, and hearts are broken in its throes,

" But then the shadow falls so seldom, we
Make us an armor of the interval;
Now here in war our shield is frequency —
The shadows are less dark, so close they fall.

" And they who die at home, fall as the leaf
Falls in a casual wind; but he who gives
A life for something, is a noble grief,
He has a meaning, and his memory lives.

" Now if this maiden in her destiny
Be not our savior, she may find her grave;
Achilles may be gentle, she may be
Spear-booty, and go home his household slave;

" Or she may stay and never fight at all,
Till the doomed city crumbles in the fire,
Then into long-drawn misery may fall,
Living to serve a vulgar man's desire;

" She may return and wed in her own land,
And die in child-birth; or sons of her bearing
Like Paris, may bring mischief in their hand,
Like Hector, may be lost in battle-faring;

" Or she may never wed, but slowly fade
Into old age unnoticed, as a tree
In a wild forest, that to none gives shade
Or fruit, but moulders in futility.

" Is it for this you would draw back the wreath,
The laurel, that her fingers all but touch?
I am too old to quarrel much with death;
Life is our sorrow, we may live too much. "

" Grief is the savor of a woman's lot, "
She said, " whether we wed or die unmated,
We cannot be a woman and taste it not;
But battle-wounds for us were never fated. "

" Daughter, if woman's fighting grieves you more
Than war itself, is it less terrible
Men should be slain than women? " " No, all war,
Whoever falls — but if this maiden fell — "

" Daughter, you never pleaded so to shield
Our dearest, not our Hector! " She replied,
" I begged him to be prudent in the field;
Had he been not so bold, he had not died.

" But still there was a chance he might return,
None for this girl. " " You would have asked him then
To stay at home and let the city burn
Had you been sure he would not come again?

" Out of our dangers come what life we have,
Our single fate, the separate name we cherish;
It was like Hector simply to be brave,
And to have stayed at home had been to perish.

" Now if this girl falls by Achilles' sword,
Her beauty undiminished dies secure,
But if we save her, what shall life afford
In place of that one moment high and pure?

" Poets and priests and lovers fallen so,
Youth through clear doorways entering to the dead,
Would you take from them the immortal woe
And give safe insignificance instead? "

So on her battle errand when the maid
Passed, in an ecstacy of faith the crowd
Hailed her their goddess on divine crusade,
And Priam watched her passing, young and proud;

She, from her radiance in the morning air,
Looked smiling up at the forlorn old chief
She came to rescue — at his scant white hair
And grey skin wrinkled with the folds of grief.