s palace of a king,
To stead their toil, to vanquished men a little help to bring.

A door there was, a secret pass into the common way
Of all King Priam's houses there, that at the backward lay
As one goes by: in other days, while yet the lordship was,
Hapless Andromache thereby unto the twain would pass
Alone, or leading to the king Astyanax her boy.
And thereby now I gain the tower, whence wretched men of Troy
In helpless wise from out their hands were casting darts aloof.
There was a tower, a sheer hight down, builded from highest roof 460
Up toward the stars; whence we were wont on Troy to look adown,
And thence away the Danaan ships, the Achaean tented town.
Against the highest stage hereof the steel about we bear,
Just where the joints do somewhat give: this from its roots we tear,
And heave it up and over wall, whose toppling at the last
Bears crash and ruin, and wide away the Danaans are down cast
Beneath its fall: but more come on: nor drift of stones doth lack,
Nor doth all kind of weapon-shot at any while grow slack.
Lo, Pyrrhus in the very porch forth to the door doth pass
Exulting; bright with glittering points and flashing of the brass; 470
--E'en as a snake to daylight come, on evil herbage fed,
Who, swollen, 'neath the chilly soil hath had his winter bed,
And now, his ancient armour doffed, and sleek with youth new found,
With front upreared his slippery back he coileth o'er the ground
Up 'neath the sun; his three-cleft tongue within his mouth gleams clear:--
And with him Periphas the huge, Achilles' charioteer,
Now shield-bearer Automedon and all the Scyrian host
Closed on the walls and on the roof the blazing firebrands tost.
Pyrrhus in forefront of them all catches a mighty bill,
Beats in the hardened door, and tears perforce from hinge and sill 480
The brazen leaves; a beam hewn through, wide gaped the oak hard knit
Into a great-mouthed window there, and through the midst of it
May men behold the inner house; the long halls open lie;
Bared is the heart of Priam's home, the place of kings gone by;
And close against the very door all armed men they see.

That inner house indeed was mazed with wail and misery,
The inmost chambers of the place an echoing hubbub hold
Of women's cries, whose clamour smites the far-off stars of gold,
And through