So that my vigour, wedded to thy blood,
  Shall strike within thy pulses, like a God’s,
  To push thee forward thro’ a life of shocks, 160
  Dangers, and deeds, until endurance grow
  Sinew’d with action, and the full-grown will,
  Circled thro’ all experiences, pure law,
  Commeasure perfect freedom.’

  “Here she ceas’d,
  And Paris ponder’d, and I cried, ’O Paris, 165
  Give it to Pallas!’ but he heard me not,
  Or hearing would not hear me, woe is me!

  “O mother Ida, many-fountain’d Ida,
  Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die. 
  Idalian Aphrodite beautiful, 170
  Fresh as the foam, new-bathed in Paphian wells,
  With rosy slender fingers backward drew
  From her warm brows and bosom her deep hair
  Ambrosial, golden round her lucid throat
  And shoulder:  from the violets her light foot 175
  Shone rosy-white, and o’er her rounded form
  Between the shadows of the vine-bunches
  Floated the glowing sunlights, as she moved.

  “Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die. 
  She with a subtle smile in her mild eyes, 180
  The herald of her triumph, drawing nigh
  Half-whisper’d in his ear, ’I promise thee
  The fairest and most loving wife in Greece.’ 
  She spoke and laugh’d:  I shut my sight for fear: 
  But when I look’d, Paris had raised his arm, 185
  And I beheld great Here’s angry eyes,
  As she withdrew into the golden cloud,
  And I was left alone within the bower;
  And from that time to this I am alone,
  And I shall be alone until I die. 190

  “Yet, mother Ida, harken ere I die. 
  Fairest—–­why fairest wife? am I not fair? 
  My love hath told me so a thousand times;
  Methinks I must be fair, for yesterday,
  When I past by, a wild and wanton pard, 195
  Eyed like the evening star, with playful tail
  Crouch’d fawning in the weed.  Most loving is she? 
  Ah me, my mountain shepherd, that my arms
  Were wound about thee, and my hot lips prest
  Close, close to thine in that quick-falling dew 200
  Of fruitful kisses, thick as Autumn rains
  Flash in the pools of whirling Simois.

  “O mother, hear me yet before I die. 
  They came, they cut away my tallest pines,
  My dark tall pines, that plumed the craggy ledge 205
  High over the blue gorge, and all between
  The snowy peak and snow-white cataract
  Foster’d the callow eaglet—­from beneath
  Whose thick mysterious boughs in the dark morn
  The panther’s roar came muffled, while I sat 210
  Low in the valley.  Never, never more
  Shall lone Oenone see the morning mist
  Sweep thro’ them; never see them overlaid
  With narrow moon-lit slips of silver cloud,
  Between the loud stream and the trembling stars. 215