Classic Poem

THE HEROES OF TROY .

Thence his allotted way he toils; and now they are gaining
Those most distant fields reserved for illustrious heroes.
Tydeus meets him here, and Parthenopaeus, distinguished
Highly in war; here, too, appears the pale shade of Adrastus;
Here, lamented on earth, the Dardanians fallen in battle,
Whom, in a long array, beholding, he groaned in his spirit,
Glaucus he recognized there, Thersilochus also, and Medon,
Three of Antenor's line, Polyphaetes, the servant of Ceres,
Also Idaeus, who still retained both his car and his armour.
Frequent to right and left the spirits come thronging about him,
Nor does one look suffice; they are ever delighted to linger,
Eager to walk by his side, and question the cause of his coming.
Ah! but the chiefs of the Greeks, and Agamemnon's battalions,
When they behold the man and his glittering arms through the shadows,
Tremble with deadly fear; and some turn their backs in confusion,
Or, as of yore, retreat to their ships; others raise unavailing
Cries; their voices die on lips wide parted, but silent.
Here Deiphobus, too, son of Priam, he sees, with his body
Wounded from head to foot, his features all cruelly mangled;
Marred are his face and his hands; his temples are robbed of their beauty;
Shorn are his ears, and his nose by a hideous cut is disfigured.
Hardly he knew him at all, as he trembling covered his frightful
Wounds, yet he instantly spoke in his well-known voice to the hero: —
" Valiant and mighty Deiphobus, sprung from the proud blood of Teucer,
Who hath desired to inflict so cruel a punishment on thee?
Who hath been suffered to injure thee thus? It was rumoured among us
During that fatal night, that exhausted by killing so many,
Thou hadst fallen at last on a mound of Pelasgian corpses.
Then on the Rhaetian shore, by a cenotaph raised in thine honour,
Taking my stand, I called three times and aloud on thy spirit;
Now thy name and thine arms are guarding the place; thee, my comrade,
Vainly I sought, ere departing, to lay in the soil of thy country. "
Answered the son of Priam: " My friend, thou hast nothing neglected;
Thou hast done all for Deiphobus, all for the spirit departed.
Naught but my fate and the murderous crime of the Spartan hath plunged me
Into these ills; it is she that hath left me these marks of remembrance;
For, how that fatal night we passed in ill-founded rejoicing,
Well dost thou know, too well to need any word of reminder.
Soon as the fatal horse leaped over our towering ramparts,
Pregnant with steel, and filled with a legion of soldiers in armour,
She, on pretence of a festival, marshalled the Phrygian matrons,
Dancing with Bacchanal songs, herself in the midst with a flaming
Torch, and she called to the Greeks from the loftiest point of the fortress.
Me, with care forespent, and buried in sleep, my ill omened
Chamber was sheltering then; and a deep and delectable slumber,
Likest the stupor of death, was weighing me down as I lay there.
Meanwhile my excellent wife had removed all my arms from the palace,
Even my faithful sword she had stolen from under my pillow;
Into the palace she called Menelaus; my door she threw open,
Hoping, forsooth, to bestow a most precious reward on her lover,
Ay! and that thus might be purged all the sin and the shame of her lifetime.
Why do I linger? They burst my door; one comrade is added,
Even that father of crime, Ulysses. Ye gods! to the Grecians
Recompense grant in kind, if I with clean lips demand vengeance!
But, in return, say, now, what chances have brought thee, still living,
Into this place? Dost come by ocean wanderings driven;
Or by the gods' decree? or what is the fortune constrains thee
Saddened and sunless abodes and realms of confusion to visit? "
While they exchanged these words, already Aurora had traversed,
High in her rosy car, the meridian line of the heavens.
All their allotted time might perhaps have been spent in this manner,
But their companion gave warning, and briefly the Sibyl admonished: —
" Night rushes on, O Æneas; we squander our moments in weeping;
This is the place where the path divides into opposite courses;
One on the right to the city of Pluto the mighty extending: —
We to Elysium thus; — but that on the left retribution
Brings to the damned, and sends them down to regions infernal. "
Answered Deiphobus, " Nay, great priestess, give over thine anger,
I will depart, I will fill the roll, and return to the shadows:
Onward, our Glory, on! Improve thine happier fortunes! "
So much only he spake, and speaking turned backward his footsteps.
Quickly Æneas looks back, and sees a broad city extending
Under a cliff to the left, surrounded by triplicate bulwarks.
Round it the swift flowing stream of Tartarean Phlegethon rushes,
Surging with flames of fire, and roaring through rockladen channel.
Huge was the gate in front, with impregnable adamant columns,
So that no might of man, nor e'en the battalions of Heaven
Warring against it prevail; high looms the grim fortress of iron;
While Tisiphone, girt with her blood-dripping mantle, is crouching,
Guarding the entrance by night and by day with no respite of slumber.
Hence from afar deep groans were heard, and the echo of cruel
Scourging, and dragging of chains, and the sound of the clanking of iron.
Halted Æneas, and stood dismayed by the noise, and bewildered.
" What are these forms of crime? Speak boldly, O maiden, and answer.
What are the pains they bear? Why rises this wailing to heaven? "
Thus, then, the priestess replied: " O glorious chief of the Trojans,
No pure spirit is suffered to pass that threshold infernal;
But, when great Hecate placed the Avernian grove in my keeping,
She, herself, showed me all Hell, and taught me the judgments of Heaven.
Over these stern domains, Rhadamanthus, the Cretan, presiding,
Tortures hypocrisy true, and forces the false to confession
Even of crime committed on earth, whose late expiation
Any deferred until death, exulting in futile deception.
Armed with her scourges, avenging Tisiphone lashes the guilty,
Ceaselessly taunting their woe, her left hand lifting her cruel
Serpents on high, and she calls her pitiless army of sisters.
Then, with a creaking of harsh, grating hinges, the terrible portals
Open before them at last. Dost see what manner of warden
Sits in the outer porch, what a shape is on guard at the threshold?
Hydra, more cruel and huge, her fifty dark mouths gaping open,
Watches the gate within; then Tartarus, yawning before you,
Plunges as far again sheer down into the regions of darkness
As to our upward gaze high tower the crests of Olympus.