BOOK II.
ARGUMENT.
ÆNEAS TELLETH TO DIDO AND THE TYRIANS THE STORY OF TROY'S OVERTHROW.
All hearkened hushed, and fixed on him was every face of man,
As from the couch high set aloft Æneas thus began:
"Unutterable grief, O Queen, thou biddest me renew
The falling of the Trojan weal and realm that all shall rue
'Neath Danaan might; which thing myself unhappy did behold,
Yea, and was no small part thereof. What man might hear it told
Of Dolopes, or Myrmidons, or hard Ulysses' band,
And keep the tears back? Dewy night now falleth from the land
Of heaven, and all the setting stars are bidding us to sleep:
But if to know our evil hap thy longing is so deep,10
If thou wilt hear a little word of Troy's last agony,
Though memory shuddereth, and my heart shrunk up in grief doth lie,
I will begin.
By battle broke, and thrust aback by Fate
Through all the wearing of the years, the Danaan lords yet wait
And build a horse up mountain-huge by Pallas' art divine,
Fair fashioning the ribs thereof with timbers of the pine,
And feign it vowed for safe return, and let the fame fly forth.
Herein by stealth a sort of men chosen for bodies' worth
Amid its darkness do they shut; the caverns inly lost
Deep in the belly of the thing they fill with armed host.20
In sight of Troy lies Tenedos, an island known of all,
And rich in wealth before the realm of Priam had its fall,
Now but a bay and roadstead poor, where scarcely ships may ride.
So thither now they sail away in desert place to hide.
We thought them gone, and that they sought Mycenæ on a wind,
Whereat the long-drawn grief of Troy fell off from every mind.
The gates are opened; sweet it is the Dorian camp to see,
The dwellings waste, the shore all void where they were wont to be:
Here dwelt the band of Dolopes, here was Achilles set,29
And this was where their ships were beached; here edge to edge we met.
Some wonder at unwedded maid Minerva's gift of death,
That baneful mountain of a horse; and first Thymœtes saith
'Twere good in walls to lead the thing, on topmost burg to stand;
Whether such word the fate of Troy or evil treason planned
I know not: Capys and the rest, who better counsel have,
Bid take the fashioned guile of Greeks, the doubtful gift they gave,
To tumble it adown to sea, with piled-up fire to burn,
Or bore the belly of the beast its hidden holes to learn;
So cleft atwain is rede of men abiding there in doubt.
But first before all others now with much folk all about40
Laocoon the fiery man runs from the burg adown,
And shouts from far:
'O wretched men, how hath such madness grown?
Deem ye the foe hath fared away? Deem ye that Danaan gifts
May ever lack due share of guile? Are these Ulysses' shifts?
For either the Achæans lurk within this fashioned tree,
Or 'tis an engine wrought with craft bane of our walls to be,
To look into our very homes, and scale the town perforce:
Some guile at least therein abides: Teucrians, trust not the horse!
Whatso it is, the Danaan folk, yea gift-bearing I fear.'49
Thus having said, with valiant might he hurled a huge-wrought spear
Against the belly of the beast swelled out with rib and stave;
It stood a-trembling therewithal; its hollow caverns gave
From womb all shaken with the stroke a mighty sounding groan.
And but for God's heart turned from us, for God's fate fixed and known,
He would have led us on with steel to foul the Argive den,
And thou, O Troy, wert standing now, thou Priam's burg as then!
But lo, where Dardan shepherds lead, with plenteous clamour round,
A young man unto Priam's place with hands behind him bound,
Who privily had thrust himself before their way e'en now
The work to crown, and into Troy an open way to show60
Unto the Greeks; a steadfast soul, prepared for either end,
Or utterly to work his craft or unto death to bend.
Eager to see him as he went around the Trojans flock
On every side, and each with each contend the man to mock.
Lo now, behold the Danaan guile, and from one wrong they wrought
Learn ye what all are like to be.
For as he stood in sight of all, bewildered, weaponless,
And let his eyes go all around the gazing Phrygian press,
He spake:
'What land shall have me now, what sea my head shall hide?
What then is left of deed to do that yet I must abide?70
No place I have among the Greeks, and Dardan folk withal
My foemen are, and bloody end, due doom, upon me call.'