Loud wailed the Nymphs around him; for they still Remembered how their nursling wont to lisp His childish prattle, compassed with their smiles.
And with them mourned the neatherds light of foot, Sorrowful-hearted; moaned the mountain-glens.
Then unto travail-burdened Priam's queen A herdman told the dread doom of her son.
Wildly her trembling heart leapt when she heard;
With failing limbs she sank to earth and wailed:
"Dead! thou dead, O dear child! Grief heaped on grief Hast thou bequeathed me, grief eternal! Best Of all my sons, save Hector alone, wast thou!
While beats my heart, my grief shall weep for thee.
The hand of Heaven is in our sufferings:
Some Fate devised our ruin -- oh that I Had lived not to endure it, but had died In days of wealthy peace! But now I see Woes upon woes, and ever look to see Worse things -- my children slain, my city sacked And burned with fire by stony-hearted foes, Daughters, sons' wives, all Trojan women, haled Into captivity with our little ones!"
So wailed she; but the King heard naught thereof, But weeping ever sat by Hector's grave, For most of all his sons he honoured him, His mightiest, the defender of his land.
Nothing of Paris knew that pierced heart;
But long and loud lamented Helen; yet Those wails were but for Trojan ears; her soul With other thoughts was busy, as she cried:
"Husband, to me, to Troy, and to thyself A bitter blow is this thy woeful death!
In misery hast thou left me, and I look To see calamities more deadly yet.
Oh that the Spirits of the Storm had snatched Me from the earth when first I fared with thee Drawn by a baleful Fate! It might not be;
The Gods have meted ruin to thee and me.
With shuddering horror all men look on me, All hate me! Place of refuge is there none For me; for if to the Danaan host I fly, With torments will they greet me. If I stay, Troy's sons and daughters here will compass me And rend me. Earth shall cover not my corpse, But dogs and fowl of ravin shall devour.
Oh had Fate slain me ere I saw these woes!"
So cried she: but for him far less she mourned Than for herself, remembering her own sin.
Yea, and Troy's daughters but in semblance wailed For him: of other woes their hearts were full.
Some thought on parents, some on husbands slain, These on their sons, on honoured kinsmen those.
One only heart was pierced with grief unfeigned, Oenone. Not with them of Troy she wailed, But far away within that desolate home Moaning she lay on her lost husband's bed.
As when the copses on high mountains stand White-veiled with frozen snow, which o'er the glens The west-wind blasts have strown, but now the sun And east-wind melt it fast, and the long heights With water-courses stream, and down the glades Slide, as they thaw, the heavy sheets, to swell The rushing waters of an ice-cold spring, So melted she in tears of anguished pain, And for her own, her husband, agonised, And cried to her heart with miserable moans:
"Woe for my wickedness! O hateful life!
I loved mine hapless husband -- dreamed with him To pace to eld's bright threshold hand in hand, And heart in heart! The gods ordained not so.
Oh had the black Fates snatched me from the earth Ere I from Paris turned away in hate!
My living love hath left me! -- yet will I Dare to die with him, for I loathe the light."
So cried she, weeping, weeping piteously, Remembering him whom death had swallowed up, Wasting, as melteth wax before the flame Yet secretly, being fearful lest her sire Should mark it, or her handmaids till the night Rose from broad Ocean, flooding all the earth With darkness bringing men release from toil.
Then, while her father and her maidens slept, She slid the bolts back of the outer doors, And rushed forth like a storm-blast. Fast she ran, As when a heifer 'mid the mountains speeds, Her heart with passion stung, to meet her mate, And madly races on with flying feet, And fears not, in her frenzy of desire, The herdman, as her wild rush bears her on, So she but find her mate amid the woods;
So down the long tracks flew Oenone's feet;
Seeking the awful pyre, to leap thereon.
No weariness she knew: as upon wings Her feet flew faster ever, onward spurred By fell Fate, and the Cyprian Queen. She feared No shaggy beast that met her in the dark Who erst had feared them sorely -- rugged rock And precipice of tangled mountain-slope, She trod them all unstumbling; torrent-beds She leapt. The white Moon-goddess from on high Looked on her, and remembered her own love, Princely Endymion, and she pitied her In that wild race, and, shining overhead In her full brightness, made the long tracks plain.
Through mountain-gorges so she won to where Wailed other Nymphs round Alexander's corpse.
Roared up about him a great wall of fire;
For from the mountains far and near had come Shepherds, and heaped the death-bale broad and high For 1ove's and sorrow's latest service done To one of old their comrade and their king.
Sore weeping stood they round. She raised no wail, The broken-hearted, when she saw him there, But, in her mantle muffling up her face, Leapt on the pyre: loud wailed that multitude.
There burned she, clasping Paris. All the Nymphs Marvelled, beholding her beside her lord Flung down, and heart to heart spake whispering:
"Verily evil-hearted Paris was, Who left a leal true wife, and took for bride A wanton, to himself and Troy a curse.
Ah fool, who recked not of the broken heart Of a most virtuous wife, who more than life Loved him who turned from her and loved her not!"
So in their hearts the Nymphs spake: but they twain Burned on the pyre, never to hail again The dayspring. Wondering herdmen stood around, As once the thronging Argives marvelling saw Evadne clasping mid the fire her lord Capaneus, slain by Zeus' dread thunderbolt.
But when the blast of the devouring fire Had made twain one, Oenone and Paris, now One little heap of ashes, then with wine Quenched they the embers, and they laid their bones In a wide golden vase, and round them piled The earth-mound; and they set two pillars there That each from other ever turn away;
For the old jealousy in the marble lives.
