II

     Thick as water, bursts remote
     Round her ears the alien din,
     While her little sullen chin
     Fills the hollows of her throat: 
     Silent lie her slaughter’d kin.

     III

     Once to many a pealing shriek,
     Lo, from Ilion’s topmost tower,
     Ilion’s fierce prophetic flower
     Cried the coming of the Greek! 
     Black in Hades sits the hour.

     IV

     Eyeing phantoms of the Past,
     Folded like a prophet’s scroll,
     In the deep’s long shoreward roll
     Here she sees the anchor cast: 
     Backward moves her sunless soul.

     V

     Chieftains, brethren of her joy,
     Shades, the white light in their eyes
     Slanting to her lips, arise,
     Crowding quick the plains of Troy: 
     Now they tell her not she lies.

     VI

     O the bliss upon the plains,
     Where the joining heroes clashed
     Shield and spear, and, unabashed,
     Challenged with hot chariot-reins
     Gods!—­they glimmer ocean-washed.

     VII

     Alien voices round the ships,
     Thick as water, shouting Home. 
     Argives, pale as midnight foam,
     Wax before her awful lips: 
     White as stars that front the gloom.

     VIII

     Like a torch-flame that by day
     Up the daylight twists, and, pale,
     Catches air in leaps that fail,
     Crushed by the inveterate ray,
     Through her shines the Ten-Years’ Tale.

     IX

     Once to many a pealing shriek,
     Lo, from Ilion’s topmost tower,
     Ilion’s fierce prophetic flower
     Cried the coming of the Greek! 
     Black in Hades sits the hour.

     X

     Still upon her sunless soul
     Gleams the narrow hidden space
     Forward, where her fiery race
     Falters on its ashen goal: 
     Still the Future strikes her face.

     XI

     See toward the conqueror’s car
     Step the purple Queen whose hate
     Wraps red-armed her royal mate
     With his Asian tempest-star: 
     Now Cassandra views her Fate.

     XII

     King of men! the blinded host
     Shout:- she lifts her brooding chin: 
     Glad along the joyous din
     Smiles the grand majestic ghost: 
     Clytemnestra leads him in.

     XIII

     Lo, their smoky limbs aloof,
     Shadowing heaven and the seas,
     Fates and Furies, tangling Threes,
     Tear and mix above the roof: 
     Fates and fierce Eumenides.

     XIV

     Is the prophetess with rods
     Beaten, that she writhes in air? 
     With the Gods who never spare,
     Wrestling with the unsparing Gods,
     Lone, her body struggles there.