Classic Poem

What weariness of wind and wave and foam
Was to be for Odysseus ere his home
Of scrub and crag and scanty pasturage
He saw again! What stress of pilgrimage
Through roaring waterways and cities of men,
What sojourn among folk beyond the ken
Of mortal seafarers in homelier seas,
More trodden lands! Sure, none had earned his ease
As he, that windless morning when he drew
Near silent Ithaca, gray in misty blue,
And wondered on the old familiar scene,
Which was to him as it had never been
Aforetime. Say, had he but had inkling
That in this hour all that long wandering
Of his was self-ensured, had he been bold
To plan and carry what must now be told
Of this too hardy champion? Solve it you
Whose chronicling is over. Mine's to do.
All day until the setting of the sun,
Devising how to use what he had won
Odysseus stood; for nothing within walls
Was hid, he knew the very trumpet-calls
Wherewith they turned the guard out, and the cries
The sentries used to hearten or advise
The city in the watches of the night.
Once in, no hope for Ilios; but his plight
No better stood for that, since no way in
Could he conceive, nor entry hope to win
For any force enough to seize the gate
And open for the host.
But then some Fate,
Or, some men say, Athené the gray-eyed,
Ever his friend, never far from his side,
Prompted him look about him. Then he heeds
A stork set motionless in the dry reeds
That lift their withered arms, a skeleton host,
Long after winter and her aching frost
Are gone, and rattle in the spring's soft breeze
Dry bones, as if to daunt the budding trees
And warn them of the summer's wrath to come.
Still sat the bird, as fast asleep or numb
With cold, her head half-buried in her breast,
With close-shut eyes: a dead bird on the nest,
Arrow-shot--for behold! a wound she bore
Mid-breast, which stooping to, to see the more,
Lo, forth from it came busy, one by one,
Light-moving ants! So she to her death had gone
These many days; and there where she lost life
Her carrion shell with it again was rife.
So teems the earth, that ere our clay be rotten
New hosts sweep clean the hearth, our deeds forgotten.
But stooping still, Odysseus saw her not
Nor her brisk tenantry; afar his thought,
And after it his vision, crossed the plain
And lit on Ilios, dim and lapt in rain,
Piled up like blocks which Titans rear to mark
Where hero of their breed sits stiff and stark,
Spear in dead hand, and dead chin on dead knees;
And "Ha," cried he, "proud hinderer of our ease,
Now hold I thee within my hollowed hand!"
Straightway returning, Troy's destruction planned,
He sends for one Epeios, craftsman good,
And bids him frame him out a horse in wood,
Big-bellied as a ship of sixty oars
Such as men use for traffic, not in wars,
Nor piracy, but roomy, deep in the hold,
Where men may shelter if needs be from cold,
Or sleep between their watches. "Scant not you,"
He said, "your timber not your sweat. Drive through
This horse for me, Epeios, as if we
Awaited it to give the word for sea
And Hellas and our wives and children dear;
For this is true, without it we stay here
Another ten-year shift, if by main force
We would take Troy, but ten days with my horse."
So to their task Epeios and his teams
Went valiantly, and heaved and hauled great beams
Of timber from far Ida, and hacked amain
And rought the framework out. Then to it again
They went with adzes and their smoothing tools,
And made all shapely; next bored for their dools
With augurs, and made good stock on to stock
With mortise and with dovetail. Last, they lock
The frames with clamps, the nether to the upper,
And body forth a horse from crest to crupper
In outline.
Now their ribbing must be shaped
With axe to take the round, first rought, then scraped
With adzes, then deep-mortised in the frame
To bear the weight of so much mass, whose fame
When all was won, the Earth herself might quake,
Supporting on her broad breast. Now they take
Planks sawn and smoothed, and set them over steam
Of cauldrons to be supple. These to the beam
Above they rivet fast, and bend them down
Till from the belly more they seem to have grown
Than in it to be ended, so well sunk
And grooved they be. There's for the horse's trunk.
But as for head and legs, these from the block
Epeios carved, and fixed them on the stock
With long pins spigotted and clamps of steel;
And then the tail, downsweeping to the heel,
He carved and rivetted in place. Yet more
He did; for cunningly he made a door
Beneath the belly of him, in a part
Where Nature lends her aid to sculptor's art,
And few would have the thought to look for it,
Or eyes so keen to find, if they'd the wit.
Greatly stood he, hogmaned, with wrinkled néck
And wrying jaw, as though upon the check
One rode him. On three legs he stood, with one
Pawing the air, as if his course to run
Was overdue. Almost you heard the champ
And clatter of the bit, almost the stamp
And scrape of hoof; almost his fretful crest
He seemed to toss on high. So much confest
The wondering host. "But where's the man to ride?"
They askt. Odysseus said, "He'll go inside.
Yet there shall seem a rider--nay, let two
Bespan so brave a back," Epeios anew
He spurred, and had his horsemen as he would,
Two noble youths, star-frontletted, but nude
Of clothing, and unarmed, who sat as though
Centaurs not men, and with their knees did show
The road to travel. Next Odysseus bid,
"Gild thou me him, Epeios"; which he did,
And burnisht after, till he blazed afar
Like that great image which men hail for a star
Of omen holy, image without peer,
Chryselephantine Athené with her spear,
Shining o'er Athens; to which their course they set
When homeward faring through the seaways wet
From Poros or from Nauplia, or some
From the Eubœan gulf, or where the foam
Washes the feet of Sounion, on whose brow
Like a white crown the shafts burn even now.
Such was the shaping of the Horse of Wood,
The bane of Ilios.
Ordered now they stood
Midway between the ships and Troy, and cast
The lots, who should go in from first to last
Of all the chieftains chosen. And the lot
Leapt out of Diomede, so in he got
And sat up in the neck. Next Aias went,
Clasping his shins and blinking as he bent,
Working the ridges of his villainous brow,
Like puzzled, patient monkey on a bough
That peers with bald, far-seeing eyes, whose scope
And steadfastness seem there to mock our hope;
Next Antiklos, and next Meriones
The Cretan; next good Teukros. After these
Went Pyrrhos, Agamemnon, King of men,
Menestheus and Idomeneus, and then
King Menelaus; and Odysseus last
Entered the desperate doorway, and made fast.
And all the Achaian remnant, seeing their best
To this great venture finally addrest,
Stood awed in silence; but Nestor the old
Bade bring the victims, and these on the wold
In sight of Troy he slew, and so uplift
The smoke of fire, and bloodsmoke, as a gift
Acceptable to Him he hailed by name
Kronion, sky-dweller, who giveth fame,
Lord of the thunder; to Heré next, and Her,
The Maid of War and holy harbinger
Of Father Zeus, who bears the Ægis dread
And shakes it when the storm peals overhead
And lightning splits the firmament with fire;
Nor yet forgat Poseidon, dark-haired sire
Of all the seas, and of great Ocean's flow,
The girdler of the world. So back with slow
And pondered steps they all returned, and dark
Swallowed up Troy, and Horse, and them who stark
Abode within it. And the great stars shone
Out over sea and land; and speaking none,
Nursing his arms, nursing within his breast
His enterprise, each hero sat at rest
Ignorant of the world of day and night,
Or whether he should live to see the light,
Or see it but to perish in this cage.
Only Odysseus felt his heart engage
The blithelier for the peril. He was stuff
That thrives by daring, nor can dare enough.

Three days, three nights before the Skaian Gate
Sat they within their ambush, apt for fate;
Three days, three nights, the Trojans swarmed the walls
And towers or held high council in their halls
What this portended, this o'erweening mass
Reared up so high no man stretching could pass
His hand over the crupper, of such girth
Of haunch, to span the pair no man on earth
Could compass with both arms. But most their eyes
Were for the riders who in godlike guise
Went naked into battle, as Gods use,
Untrammel'd by our shifts of shields and shoes,
As if we dread the earth whereof we are.
Sons of God, these: for bore not each a star
Ablaze upon his forelock? Lo, they say,
Kastor and Polydeukes, who but they,
Come in to save their sister at the last,
And war for Troy, and root King Priam fast
In his demesne, him and his heirs for ever!
Now call they soothsayers to make endeavour
With engines of their craft to read the thing;
But others urge them hale it to the King--
"Let him dispose," they say, "of it and us,
And order as he will, from Pergamos
To heave it o'er the sheer and bring to wreck;
Or burn with fire; or harbour to bedeck
The temple of some God: of three ways one.
Here it cannot abide to flout the sun
With arrogant flash for every beam of his."
Herewith agreed the men of mysteries,
Raking the bloodsick earth to have the truth,
And getting what they lookt for, as in sooth
A man will do. So then they all fell to't
To hale with cords and lever foot by foot
The portent; and as frenzy frenzy breeds,
And what one has another thinks he needs,
So to a straining twenty other score
Lent hands, and ever from the concourse more
Of them, who hauled as if Troy's life depended
On hastening forward that wherein it ended.
So came the Horse to Troy, so was filled up
With retribution that sweet loving-cup
Paris had drunk to Helen overseas--
The cup which whoso drains must taste the lees.