For many tales go of that city's fall,
And scarcely do agree upon one point:
Some say Antenor did betray the town;
Others report 'twas Sinon's perjury;
But all in this, that Troy is overcome,
And Priam dead; yet how, we hear no news.
Æn. A woful tale bids Dido to unfold,
Whose memory, like pale Death's stony mace,
Beats forth my senses from this troubled soul,
And makes Æneas sink at Dido's feet.
Dido. What, faints Æneas to remember Troy,
In whose defence he fought so valiantly?
Look up, and speak.
Æn. Then speak, Æneas, with Achilles' tongue:
And, Dido, and you Carthaginian peers,
Hear me; but yet with Myrmidons' harsh ears,
Daily inur'd to broils and massacres,
Lest you be mov'd too much with my sad tale.
The Grecian soldiers, tir'd with ten years' war,
Began to cry, "Let us unto our ships,
Troy is invincible, why stay we here?"
With whose outcries Atrides being appall'd,
Summon'd the captains to his princely tent;
Who, looking on the scars we Trojans gave,
Seeing the number of their men decreas'd,
And the remainder weak and out of heart,
Gave up their voices to dislodge the camp,
And so in troops all march'd to Tenedos:[1]
Where when they came, Ulysses on the sand
Assay'd with honey words to turn them back;
And, as he spoke, to further his intent,
The winds did drive huge billows to the shore,
And heaven was darken'd with tempestuous clouds;
Then he alleg'd the gods would have them stay,
And prophesied Troy should be overcome:
And therewithal he call'd false Sinon forth,
A man compact of craft and perjury,
Whose ticing tongue was made of Hermes' pipe,
To force an hundred watchful eyes to sleep;
And him, Epeus[2] having made the horse,
With sacrificing wreaths upon his head,
Ulysses sent to our unhappy town;
Who, grovelling in the mire of Xanthus' banks,
His hands bound at his back, and both his eyes
Turn'd up to heaven, as one resolv'd to die,
Our Phrygian shepherd[s] hal'd within the gates,
And brought unto the court of Priamus;
To whom he us'd action so pitiful,
Looks so remorseful,[3] vows so forcible,
As therewithal the old man overcome,
Kiss'd him, embrac'd him, and unloos'd his bands;
And then—Dido, pardon me!
Dido. Nay, leave not here; resolve me of the rest.
Æn. O, the enchanting words of that base slave
Made him to think Epeus' pine-tree horse
A sacrifice t' appease Minerva's wrath!
The rather, for that one Laocoon,
Breaking a spear upon his hollow breast,
Was with two wingèd serpents stung to death.
Whereat aghast, we were commanded straight
With reverence to draw it into Troy:
In which unhappy work was I employ'd;
These hands did help to hale it to the gates,
Through which it could not enter, 'twas so huge,—
O, had it never enter'd, Troy had stood!
But Priamus, impatient of delay,
Enforc'd a wide breach in that rampir'd wall
Which thousand battering-rams could never pierce,
And so came in this fatal instrument:
At whose accursèd feet, as overjoy'd,
We banqueted, till, overcome with wine,
Some surfeited, and others soundly slept.
Which Sinon viewing, caus'd the Greekish spies
To haste to Tenedos, and tell the camp:
Then he unlock'd the horse; and suddenly,
From out his entrails, Neoptolemus,
Setting his spear upon the ground, leapt forth,
And, after him, a thousand Grecians more,
In whose stern faces shin'd the quenchless fire
That after burnt the pride of Asia.
s
- ↑ in troops all march'd to Tenedos] An odd mistake on the part of the poet; similar to that which is attributed to the Duke of Newcastle in Smollet's Humphry Clinker (vol. i. 236, ed. 1783), where his grace is made to talk about "thirty thousand French marching from Acadia to Cape Breton." (The following passage of Sir J. Harington's Orlando Furioso will hardly be thought sufficient to vindicate our author from the imputation of a blunder in geography;
Now had they lost the sight of Holland shore, And marcht with gentle gale in comely ranke," &c.
B. x. st. 16.)
- ↑ Epeus] I cannot resist the present opportunity of citing from Quintus Smyrnæus a striking passage in which this personage is mentioned;
(
Greek characters)
Lib, xii. 314, ed. Tauchn., 1829.
- ↑ remorseful] i.e. piteous.
