Prologue To The Argive Women
(Odysseus before the House of Paris.)
OD. About this wicked house ten years
The strife 'twixt Troy and Greece has surged
Since rifling Paris, thief and traitor,
Drew all men to the hue and cry
Menelaus made after him ;
And me, Laertes' son, my lands
And wife and child forsook, he drew
Into the weary insatiable years
Of slaughter, man to man, and Doom
Long-gathered, palsying heart and heart,
And Valour pent in little room—
Ten years abrim, but in this tenth,
Now at the last, within this hour,
To drown the city and the sin
In one great well of blood, hence flooding
Where Paris keeps her his delight,
Soon to prove bane of Troy—and his.
His, for her heart is changed ; she now
Longs for her husband, for her child,
For Lacedaemon, where she was born
And wooed, and learned her shameful lore,
The which now loathing, him her teacher,
Him her sleek thief she scorns, being all
Virgin for him who loved her first,
Nor ever swerved through years denied ;
And he, at last in sight
Of his reward, kneels for the crown,
He for the crown, a crowned king,
Of his high heart and purpose.
Yet
Not he alone, nor Greece alone
Made war in this high quarrel. Nay,
The gods themselves flung into it
Their pomp and panoply of storm,
Terrors of sky and sea, great winds,
Thunder and blown fire, and flood tides
And irresistible surge of the main,
Some to uphold the Dardan house,
And some the wile of Kypris even
Whose sweet poison made Helen sinner ;
And some, as raving Ares, thus
Fulfill'd their natures, to whom men
Are as a tilth to weed, with spear
In visible hand, and battle shout
In terrible mouth ; and met in shock
Other celestial forms, and them
Highest of all and most to us—
Nearer to us for our more need—
[...] Read more
poem by Maurice Hewlett
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