And scarce they felt the breath of the white wing
Of Winter, in the cave where they would lie
On beds of heather by the fire, till Spring
Should crown them with her buds in passing by.

XIV.

For elbow-deep their flowery bed was strown
With fragrant leaves and with crush'd asphodel,
And sweetly still the shepherd-pipe made moan,
And many a tale of Love they had to tell,--
How Daphnis loved the strange, shy maiden well,
And how she loved him not, and how he died,
And oak-trees moan'd his dirge, and blossoms fell
Like tears from lindens by the water-side!

XV.

But colder, fleeter than the Winter's wing,
Time pass'd; and Paris changed, and now no more
OEnone heard him on the mountain sing,
Not now she met him in the forest hoar.
Nay, but she knew that on an alien shore
An alien love he sought; yet was she strong
To live, who deem'd that even as of yore
In days to come might Paris love her long.

XVI.

For dark OEnone from her Father drew
A power beyond all price; the gift to deal
With wounded men, though now the dreadful dew
Of Death anoint them, and the secret seal
Of Fate be set on them; these might she heal;
And thus OEnone trusted still to save
Her lover at the point of death, and steal
His life from Helen, and the amorous grave.

XVII.

And she had borne, though Paris knew it not,
A child, fair Corythus, to be her shame,
And still she mused, whenas her heart was hot,
"He hath no child by that Achaean dame:"
But when her boy unto his manhood came,
Then sorer yet OEnone did repine,
And bade him "fare to Ilios, and claim
Thy father's love, and all that should be thine!"

XVIII.

Therewith a golden bodkin from her hair
She drew, and from a green-tress'd birchen tree
She pluck'd a strip of smooth white bark and fair,
And many signs and woful graved she,
A message of the evil things to be.
Then deftly closed the birch-bark, fold on fold,
And bound the tokens well and cunningly,
Three times and four times, with a thread of gold.

XIX.

"Give these to Argive Helen's hand," she cried:
And so embraced her child, and with no fear
Beheld him leaping down the mountain-side,
Like a king's son that goes to hunt the deer,
Clad softly, and in either hand a spear,
With two swift-footed hounds that follow'd him,
So leap'd he down the grassy slopes and sheer,
And won the precinct of the forest dim.

XX.

He trod that ancient