They swore, and it was ended! The hero turned to clasp his blooming bride—— Whence—what—was that keen twang—keen, shrill, and piercing, which broke the hush of feeling, that followed on that awful oath sworn between noble foes, now foes no longer? Why does Achilles start with a convulsive shudder! He reels, he staggers, he falls head-long—and see the arrow—fell and accursed deed—buried up to the very feather in the right heel of the prostrate hero! There was a moment’s pause—one moment’s!—and then, with the bow in his left hand, and the broad falchion gleaming in his right, forth from among the priests—forth from the inmost shrine—forth leaped the traitor Paris! Deiphobus, the warrior—Helenus, the priest, followed!—all armed from head to foot, all with their weapons bare and ready! There was one frantic cry—the shriek of the heart-broken bride—and then no other sound except the clash of the weapons, driven sheer through the body of the hero, against the desecrated pavement.
“Thus Hector is avenged—thus is Troy freed”—shouted the slaughterers of the mighty Greek; but if the shade of Hector was so appeased by a base vengeance, yet so was Troy not freed! For not long afterward, the flames rolled over it, that even its ruins perished, its site was lost forever!—and if Polyxena was then snatched from her spouse, yet, when in after days her living form was immolated on his tomb—their manes were united, never to part again, in the Elysian fields—the Islands of the Blessed.
LINES.
When all a woman’s eye is fire,
And ev’ry look the passions move,
The voice as sweet as Nature’s lyre—
What can a poor man do but love?
When all his light is in one eye,
And all his heaven within one breast—