SECOND CHORUS
Rose-Flower.
When Troy was sacked and all her towers
Blazed up and shook into the sky,
Smoke like great trees and flame like flowers,
And Priam’s bodyguard did die,
Then the Queen’s women snatched up spears,
And fought their way out of the gate;
Seized horses from the charioteers
And fled like mountain-streams in spate.
They would not stay for slavery
To some Greek lord until they died,
They rode the forest to be free,
Up on the peaks of snowy Ide.
Moon-Blossom.
And in the forest on a peak
They hewed a dwelling with the bronze,
And lived, unconquered by the Greek,
Fierce, sun-burned women, neither tame nor weak,
The panther-women called the Amazons.
They lived there on the heights and knew no men.
Having beheld the lusts of men destroy
The town of windy Troy,
They killed all men they met; their only joy
Was hunting for the wild beasts in the glen.
Together.
The wild boar and the many-branching stag,
Horse-killing panthers hidden by the brook,
The spotted death among the yellow flag,
All these with their bright spears these women took.
All these, and men, for even to be seen
By men, these hunter-women thought unclean.
So no man saw them save a glimpse afar.
Of panther-skins flung back, and swift feet flying,
And the red stag brought low to the fierce Ha!
Of women’s spear-thrusts driven in the dying.
They ruled the crags like wolves, they kept their pride
Savage and sovereign like the snow on Ide.