he sweet-voiced Muses mournfully replied.

XLV.

Yea, Muses and Sea-maidens sang his dirge,
And mightily the chant arose and shrill,
And wondrous echoes answer'd from the surge
Of the grey sea, and from the holy hill
Of Ida; and the heavy clouds and chill
Were gathering like mourners, sad and slow,
And Zeus did thunder mightily, and fill
The dells and glades of Ida deep with snow.

XLVI.

Now Paris was not sated with the fame
And rich reward Troy gave his archery;
But o'er the wine he boasted that the game
That very night he deem'd to win, or die;
"For scarce their watch the tempest will defy,"
He said, "and all undream'd of might we go,
And fall upon the Argives where they lie,
Unseen, unheard, amid the silent snow."

XLVII.

So, flush'd with wine, and clad in raiment white
Above their mail, the young men follow'd him,
Their guide a fading camp-fire in the night,
And the sea's moaning in the distance dim.
And still with eddying snow the air did swim,
And darkly did they wend they knew not where,
White in that cursed night: an army grim,
'Wilder'd with wine, and blind with whirling air.

XLVIII.

There was an outcast in the Argive host,
One Philoctetes; whom Odysseus' wile,
(For, save he help'd, the Leaguer all was lost,)
Drew from his lair within the Lemnian isle.
But him the people, as a leper vile,
Hated, and drave to a lone hut afar,
For wounded sore was he, and many a while
His cries would wake the host foredone with war.

XLIX.

Now Philoctetes was an archer wight;
But in his quiver had he little store
Of arrows tipp'd with bronze, and feather'd bright;
Nay, his were blue with mould, and fretted o'er
With many a spell Melampus wrought of yore,
Singing above his task a song of bane;
And they were venom'd with the Centaur's gore,
And tipp'd with bones of men a long while slain.

L.

This wretch for very pain might seldom sleep,
And that night slept not: in the moaning blast
He deem'd the dead about his hut did creep,
And silently he rose, and round him cast
His raiment foul, and from the door he pass'd,
And peer'd into the night, and soothly heard
A whisper'd voice; then gripp'd his arrows fast
And strung his bow, and cried a bitter word:

LI.

"Art thou a gibbering ghost with war outworn,
And thy faint life in Hades not begun?
Art thou a man that holdst my grief in scorn,
And yet dost live, and look upo