e cool current of the Western wind.

LV.

But Helen was a Saint in Heathendom,
A kinder Aphrodite; without fear
Maidens and lovers to her shrine would come
In fair Therapnae, by the waters clear
Of swift Eurotas; gently did she hear
All prayers of love, and not unheeded came
The broken supplication, and the tear
Of man or maiden overweigh'd with shame.

O'er Helen's shrine the grass is growing green,
In desolate Therapnae; none the less
Her sweet face now unworshipp'd and unseen
Abides the symbol of all loveliness,
Of Beauty ever stainless in the stress
Of warring lusts and fears;--and still divine,
Still ready with immortal peace to bless
Them that with pure hearts worship at her shrine.

NOTE

[In this story in rhyme of the fortunes of Helen, the theory that she was
an unwilling victim of the Gods has been preferred. Many of the
descriptions of manners are versified from the Iliad and the Odyssey. The
description of the events after the death of Hector, and the account of
the sack of Troy, is chiefly borrowed from Quintus Smyrnaeus.]

The character and history of Helen of Troy have been conceived of in very
different ways by poets and mythologists. In attempting to trace the
chief current of ancient traditions about Helen, we cannot really get
further back than the Homeric poems, the Iliad and Odyssey. Philological
conjecture may assure us that Helen, like most of the characters of old
romance, is "merely the Dawn," or Light, or some other bright being
carried away by Paris, who represents Night, or Winter, or the Cloud, or
some other power of darkness. Without discussing these ideas, it may be
said that the Greek poets (at all events before allegorical explanations
of mythology came in, about five hundred years before Christ) regarded
Helen simply as a woman of wonderful beauty. Homer was not thinking of
the Dawn, or the Cloud when he described Helen among the Elders on the
Ilian walls, or repeated her lament over the dead body of Hector. The
Homeric poems are our oldest literary documents about Helen, but it is
probable enough that the poet has modified and purified more ancient
traditions which still survive in various fragments of Greek legend. In
Homer Helen is always the daughter of Zeus. Isocrates tells us
("Helena," 211 b) that "while many of the demigods were children of Zeus,
he thought the paternity of none of his daughters worth claiming, save
that of