3 FALSE DAWN IN TROY

There is no man but loves her, I well know; Yet mutinous women, muttering with pinched lips, Cast side-long glances always when—unvexed— Queen Helen passes; for she is very fair, And they have only right and truth with them. Women remember all the fevered years This siege has lasted; all its many ills; The plague; the hunger; the unnumbered men Who died because this queen is beautiful,— Men whom they loved, and she loved not at all Nor even knew by name. None but remembers How coldly loved lips kissed her in farewell— Coldly, because for fairer lips than hers, And for the sake of brighter and tearless eyes, This man went forth to battle. He thereafter Beheld the plume of lithe Achilles leap As flame among the fighting, or beheld The sudden splendor of swart Diomed Crash through the press of spears; and lay quite still, Remembering that way Queen Helen has Of laughter, when the little sigh breaks through And spoils the music, or her way of speaking, Which turns to music the most trivial words Wherein that wonder and that wistfulness Her voice has always held since Hector died, Commingles with our rude and alien tongue As honey with sharp wine. Such idle words As any man who, with uncovered head, Waits and makes way when princes will to pass, May hear of her in passing, gladdened him, For all that death was fingering his throat Even now. He was content, remembering her The Queen. For she is very beautiful; And doubtless Paris, too, gets joy of her When in that gleaming place which is their home Her soft arms lift, and clasp his neck, and loose His helmet—scarcely dented as mine is, Where that wolf-visaged Greek smote yesterday Who smites no coward blows to-day, I think. —But Paris loves not blows. And then he tells His version of the battle; and they kiss; And hear shrill women wailing over corpses Without; and kiss once more. And so he lies Upon his cushioned couch, and is content,— Contented just to lie there, still as they Who fought for his love’s sake lie now, and feel Her fingers moving gently mid his curls, And hear Queen Helen’s laughter. It is for this That hollow-eyed Œnone mumbles charms On twin-peaked Ida; and gaunt Menelaus Slays silently; and heaven is wroth; and the banks Of slothful Styx, made populous with them Whose bodies rot unburied on the plains That girdle hapless Troy, are resonant With lamentation. Thus it is for this One woman’s sake, whose beauty is as a fire Fed by contending kings with honor and fame And memories of distant homes and wives, That all without there is a mighty stir Of clanging armors, wrangling foreign tongues, And many Grecian huts about our walls; And famine and death within. It is for this One woman’s sake—who sleeps now, and in sleep Smiles, as I think, who may not see her thus,— That we the common soldiers gather here, Who are as naught in Troy Town, and go forth As fodder to appease the fury of Death, Who ravens by Scamander. So we meet In the deep dawn; and furbish up our arms; And call one to another, in the dusk, With hearthside sayings and century-old jests, Until Æneas and Antenor come, Our leaders, and with sharp words marshalling us, Bid sound the trumpet, and the Tymbrian gate Vomits us forth upon the barren plains.