XXVIII.
“Ay, soon ’twixt me and Death must be his choice,
And little in that hour will Paris care
For thy sweet lips, and for thy singing voice,
Thine arms of ivory, thy golden hair.
Nay, me will he embrace, and will not spare,
But bid the folk that hate thee have their joy,
And give thee to the mountain beasts to tear,
Or burn thy body on a tower of Troy.”
XXIX.
Even as she read, by Aphrodite’s will
The cloud roll’d back from Helen’s memory:
She saw the city of the rifted hill,
Fair Lacedaemon, ’neath her mountain high;
She knew the swift Eurotas running by
To mix his sacred waters with the sea,
And from the garden close she heard the cry
Of her beloved child, Hermione.
XXX.
Then instantly the horror of her shame
Fell on her, and she saw the coming years;
Famine, and fire, and plague, and all men’s blame,
The wounds of warriors and the women’s fears;
And through her heart her sorrow smote like spears,
And in her soul she knew the utmost smart
Of wives left lonely, sires bereaved, the tears
Of maidens desolate, of loves that part.
XXXI.
She drain’d the dregs out of the cup of hate;
The bitterness of sorrow, shame, and scorn;
Where’er the tongues of mortals curse their fate,
She saw herself an outcast and forlorn;
And hating sore the day that she was born,
Down in the dust she cast her golden head,
There with rent raiment and fair tresses torn,
At feet of Corythus she lay for dead.
XXXII.
But Corythus, beholding her sweet face,
And her most lovely body lying low,
Had pity on her grief and on her grace,
Nor heeded now she was his mother’s foe,
But did what might be done to ease her woe,
While, as he thought, with death for life she strove,
And loosed the necklet round her neck of snow,
As who that saw had deem’d, with hands of love.