But still Laocoon ceased not to exhort
His countrymen to burn the Horse with fire:
They would not hear, for dread of the Gods’ wrath.
But then a yet more hideous punishment
Athena visited on his hapless sons.
A cave there was, beneath a rugged cliff
Exceeding high, unscalable, wherein
Dwelt fearful monsters of the deadly brood
Of Typhon, in the rock-clefts of the isle
Calydna that looks Troyward from the sea.
Thence stirred she up the strength of serpents twain,
And summoned them to Troy. By her uproused
They shook the island as with earthquake: roared
The sea; the waves disparted as they came.
Onward they swept with fearful-flickering tongues:
Shuddered the very monsters of the deep:
Xanthus’ and Simois’ daughters moaned aloud,
The River-nymphs: the Cyprian Queen looked down
In anguish from Olympus. Swiftly they came
Whither the Goddess sped them: with grim jaws
Whetting their deadly fangs, on his hapless sons
Sprang they. All Trojans panic-stricken fled,
Seeing those fearsome dragons in their town.
No man, though ne’er so dauntless theretofore,
Dared tarry; ghastly dread laid hold on all
Shrinking in horror from the monsters. Screamed
The women; yea, the mother forgat her child,
Fear-frenzied as she fled: all Troy became
One shriek of fleers, one huddle of jostling limbs:
The streets were choked with cowering fugitives.
Alone was left Laocoon with his sons,
For death’s doom and the Goddess chained their feet.
Then, even as from destruction shrank the lads,
Those deadly fangs had seized and ravined up
The twain, outstretching to their sightless sire
Agonized hands: no power to help had he.
Trojans far off looked on from every side
Weeping, all dazed. And, having now fulfilled
Upon the Trojans Pallas’ awful hest,
Those monsters vanished ‘neath the earth; and still
Stands their memorial, where into the fane
They entered of Apollo in Pergamus
The hallowed. Therebefore the sons of Troy
Gathered, and reared a cenotaph for those
Who miserably had perished. Over it
Their father from his blind eyes rained the tears:
Over the empty tomb their mother shrieked,
Boding the while yet worse things, wailing o’er
The ruin wrought by folly of her lord,
Dreading the anger of the Blessed Ones.
As when around her void nest in a brake
In sorest anguish moans the nightingale
Whose fledglings, ere they learned her plaintive song,
A hideous serpent’s fangs have done to death,
And left the mother anguish, endless woe,
And bootless crying round her desolate home;
So groaned she for her children’s wretched death,
So moaned she o’er the void tomb; and her pangs
Were sharpened by her lord’s plight stricken blind.
While she for children and for husband moaned—
These slain, he of the sun’s light portionless—
The Trojans to the Immortals sacrificed,
Pouring the wine. Their hearts beat high with hope
To escape the weary stress of woeful war.
Howbeit the victims burned not, and the flames
Died out, as though ‘neath heavy-hissing rain;
And writhed the smoke-wreaths blood-red, and the thighs
Quivering from crumbling altars fell to earth.
Drink-offerings turned to blood, Gods’ statues wept,
And temple-walls dripped gore: along them rolled
Echoes of groaning out of depths unseen;
And all the long walls shuddered: from the towers
Came quick sharp sounds like cries of men in pain;
And, weirdly shrieking, of themselves slid back
The gate-bolts. Screaming “Desolation!” wailed
The birds of night. Above that God-built burg
A mist palled every star; and yet no cloud
Was in the flashing heavens. By Phoebus’ fane
Withered the bays that erst were lush and green.
Wolves and foul-feeding jackals came and howled
Within the gates. Ay, other signs untold
Appeared, portending woe to Dardanus’ sons
And Troy: yet no fear touched the Trojans’ hearts
Who saw all through the town those portents dire:
Fate crazed them all, that midst their revelling
Slain by their foes they might fill up their doom.
One heart was steadfast, and one soul clear-eyed,
Cassandra. Never her words were unfulfilled;
Yet was their utter truth, by Fate’s decree,
Ever as idle wind in the hearers’ ears,
That no bar to Troy’s ruin might be set.
She saw those evil portents all through Troy
Conspiring to one end; loud rang her cry,
As roars a lioness that mid the brakes
A hunter has stabbed or shot, whereat her heart
Maddens, and down the long hills rolls her roar,
And her might waxes tenfold; so with heart
Aflame with prophecy came she forth her bower.
Over her snowy shoulders tossed her hair
Streaming far down, and wildly blazed her eyes.
Her neck writhed, like a sapling in the wind
Shaken, as moaned and shrieked that noble maid:
“O wretches! into the Land of Darkness now
We are passing; for all round us full of fire
And blood and dismal moan the city is.
Everywhere portents of calamity
Gods show: destruction yawns before your feet.
Fools! ye know not your doom: still ye rejoice
With one consent in madness, who to Troy
Have brought the Argive Horse where ruin lurks!
Oh, ye believe not me, though ne’er so loud
I cry! The Erinyes and the ruthless Fates,
For Helen’s spousals madly wroth, through Troy
Dart on wild wings. And ye, ye are banqueting there
In your last feast, on meats befouled with gore,
When now your feet are on the Path of Ghosts!”
Then cried a scoffing voice an ominous word:
“Why doth a raving tongue of evil speech,
Daughter of Priam, make thy lips to cry
Words empty as wind? No maiden modesty
With purity veils thee: thou art compassed round
With ruinous madness; therefore all men scorn
Thee, babbler! Hence, thine evil bodings speak
To the Argives and thyself! For thee doth wait
Anguish and shame yet bitterer than befell
Presumptuous Laocoon. Shame it were
In folly to destroy the Immortals’ gift.”
So scoffed a Trojan: others in like sort
Cried shame on her, and said she spake but lies,
Saying that ruin and Fate’s heavy stroke
Were hard at hand. They knew not their own doom,
And mocked, and thrust her back from that huge Horse
For fain she was to smite its beams apart,
Or burn with ravening fire. She snatched a brand
Of blazing pine-wood from the hearth and ran
In fury: in the other hand she bare
A two-edged halberd: on that Horse of Doom
She rushed, to cause the Trojans to behold
With their own eyes the ambush hidden there.
But straightway from her hands they plucked and flung
Afar the fire and steel, and careless turned
To the feast; for darkened o’er them their last night.
Within the horse the Argives joyed to hear
The uproar of Troy’s feasters setting at naught
Cassandra, but they marvelled that she knew
So well the Achaeans’ purpose and device.
As mid the hills a furious pantheress,
Which from the steading hounds and shepherd-folk
Drive with fierce rush, with savage heart turns back
Even in departing, galled albeit by darts:
So from the great Horse fled she, anguish-racked
For Troy, for all the ruin she foreknew.
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