SEVENTH STAVE

What weariness of wind and wave and foam Was to be for Odysseus ere his home Of scrub and crag and scanty pasturage He saw again! What stress of pilgrimage

Through roaring waterways and cities of men, What sojourn among folk beyond the ken Of mortal seafarers in homelier seas, More trodden lands! Sure, none had earned his ease

As he, that windless morning when he drew Near silent Ithaca, gray in misty blue, And wondered on the old familiar scene, Which was to him as it had never been

Aforetime. Say, had he but had inkling That in this hour all that long wandering Of his was self-ensured, had he been bold To plan and carry what must now be told

Of this too hardy champion? Solve it you Whose chronicling is over. Mine's to do. All day until the setting of the sun, Devising how to use what he had won

Odysseus stood; for nothing within walls Was hid, he knew the very trumpet-calls Wherewith they turned the guard out, and the cries The sentries used to hearten or advise

The city in the watches of the night. Once in, no hope for Ilios; but his plight No better stood for that, since no way in Could he conceive, nor entry hope to win

For any force enough to seize the gate And open for the host. But then some Fate, Or, some men say, Athené the gray-eyed,

Ever his friend, never far from his side, Prompted him look about him. Then he heeds A stork set motionless in the dry reeds That lift their withered arms, a skeleton host,

Long after winter and her aching frost Are gone, and rattle in the spring's soft breeze Dry bones, as if to daunt the budding trees And warn them of the summer's wrath to come.

Still sat the bird, as fast asleep or numb With cold, her head half-buried in her breast, With close-shut eyes: a dead bird on the nest, Arrow-shot — for behold! a wound she bore

Mid-breast, which stooping to, to see the more, Lo, forth from it came busy, one by one, Light-moving ants! So she to her death had gone These many days; and there where she lost life

Her carrion shell with it again was rife. So teems the earth, that ere our clay be rotten New hosts sweep clean the hearth, our deeds forgotten. But stooping still, Odysseus saw her not

Nor her brisk tenantry; afar his thought, And after it his vision, crossed the plain And lit on Ilios, dim and lapt in rain, Piled up like blocks which Titans rear to mark

Where hero of their breed sits stiff and stark, Spear in dead hand, and dead chin on dead knees; And “Ha,” cried he, “proud hinderer of our ease, Now hold I thee within my hollowed hand!”

Straightway returning, Troy's destruction planned, He sends for one Epeios, craftsman good, And bids him frame him out a horse in wood, Big-bellied as a ship of sixty oars

Such as men use for traffic, not in wars, Nor piracy, but roomy, deep in the hold, Where men may shelter if needs be from cold, Or sleep between their watches. “Scant not you,”

He said, “your timber not your sweat. Drive through This horse for me, Epeios, as if we Awaited it to give the word for sea And Hellas and our wives and children dear;

For this is true, without it we stay here Another ten-year shift, if by main force We would take Troy, but ten days with my horse.” So to their task Epeios and his teams

Went valiantly, and heaved and hauled great beams Of timber from far Ida, and hacked amain And rought the framework out. Then to it again They went with adzes and their smoothing tools,

And made all shapely; next bored for their dools With augurs, and made good stock on to stock With mortise and with dovetail. Last, they lock The frames with clamps, the nether to the upper,

And body forth a horse from crest to crupper In outline. Now their ribbing must be shaped With axe to take the round, first rought, then scraped

With adzes, then deep-mortised in the frame To bear the weight of so much mass, whose fame When all was won, the Earth herself might quake, Supporting on her broad breast. Now they take

Planks sawn and smoothed, and set them over steam Of cauldrons to be supple. These to the beam Above they rivet fast, and bend them down Till from the belly more they seem to have grown

Than in it to be ended, so well sunk And grooved they be. There's for the horse's trunk. But as for head and legs, these from the block Epeios carved, and fixed them on the stock

With long pins spigotted and clamps of steel; And then the tail, downsweeping to the heel, He carved and rivetted in place. Yet more He did; for cunningly he made a door

Beneath the belly of him, in a part Where Nature lends her aid to sculptor's art, And few would have the thought to look for it, Or eyes so keen to find, if they'd the wit.

Greatly stood he, hogmaned, with wrinkled néck And wrying jaw, as though upon the check One rode him. On three legs he stood, with one Pawing the air, as if his course to run

Was overdue. Almost you heard the champ And clatter of the bit, almost the stamp And scrape of hoof; almost his fretful crest He seemed to toss on high. So much confest

The wondering host. “But where's the man to ride?” They askt. Odysseus said, “He'll go inside. Yet there shall seem a rider — nay, let two Bespan so brave a back,” Epeios anew

He spurred, and had his horsemen as he would, Two noble youths, star-frontletted, but nude Of clothing, and unarmed, who sat as though Centaurs not men, and with their knees did show

The road to travel. Next Odysseus bid, “Gild thou me him, Epeios”; which he did, And burnisht after, till he blazed afar Like that great image which men hail for a star

Of omen holy, image without peer, Chryselephantine Athené with her spear, Shining o'er Athens; to which their course they set When homeward faring through the seaways wet

From Poros or from Nauplia, or some From the Eubœan gulf, or where the foam Washes the feet of Sounion, on whose brow Like a white crown the shafts burn even now.

Such was the shaping of the Horse of Wood, The bane of Ilios. Ordered now they stood Midway between the ships and Troy, and cast

The lots, who should go in from first to last Of all the chieftains chosen. And the lot Leapt out of Diomede, so in he got And sat up in the neck. Next Aias went,

Clasping his shins and blinking as he bent, Working the ridges of his villainous brow, Like puzzled, patient monkey on a bough That peers with bald, far-seeing eyes, whose scope

And steadfastness seem there to mock our hope; Next Antiklos, and next Meriones The Cretan; next good Teukros. After these Went Pyrrhos, Agamemnon, King of men,

Menestheus and Idomeneus, and then King Menelaus; and Odysseus last Entered the desperate doorway, and made fast. And all the Achaian remnant, seeing their best

To this great venture finally addrest, Stood awed in silence; but Nestor the old Bade bring the victims, and these on the wold In sight of Troy he slew, and so uplift

The smoke of fire, and bloodsmoke, as a gift Acceptable to Him he hailed by name Kronion, sky-dweller, who giveth fame, Lord of the thunder; to Heré next, and Her,

The Maid of War and holy harbinger Of Father Zeus, who bears the Ægis dread And shakes it when the storm peals overhead And lightning splits the firmament with fire;

Nor yet forgat Poseidon, dark-haired sire Of all the seas, and of great Ocean's flow, The girdler of the world. So back with slow And pondered steps they all returned, and dark

Swallowed up Troy, and Horse, and them who stark Abode within it. And the great stars shone Out over sea and land; and speaking none, Nursing his arms, nursing within his breast

His enterprise, each hero sat at rest Ignorant of the world of day and night, Or whether he should live to see the light, Or see it but to perish in this cage.

Only Odysseus felt his heart engage The blithelier for the peril. He was stuff That thrives by daring, nor can dare enough. Three days, three nights before the Skaian Gate

Sat they within their ambush, apt for fate; Three days, three nights, the Trojans swarmed the walls And towers or held high council in their halls What this portended, this o'erweening mass

Reared up so high no man stretching could pass His hand over the crupper, of such girth Of haunch, to span the pair no man on earth Could compass with both arms. But most their eyes

Were for the riders who in godlike guise Went naked into battle, as Gods use, Untrammel'd by our shifts of shields and shoes, As if we dread the earth whereof we are.

Sons of God, these: for bore not each a star Ablaze upon his forelock? Lo, they say, Kastor and Polydeukes, who but they, Come in to save their sister at the last,

And war for Troy, and root King Priam fast In his demesne, him and his heirs for ever! Now call they soothsayers to make endeavour With engines of their craft to read the thing;

But others urge them hale it to the King — “Let him dispose,” they say, “of it and us, And order as he will, from Pergamos To heave it o'er the sheer and bring to wreck;

Or burn with fire; or harbour to bedeck The temple of some God: of three ways one. Here it cannot abide to flout the sun With arrogant flash for every beam of his.”

Herewith agreed the men of mysteries, Raking the bloodsick earth to have the truth, And getting what they lookt for, as in sooth A man will do. So then they all fell to't

To hale with cords and lever foot by foot The portent; and as frenzy frenzy breeds, And what one has another thinks he needs, So to a straining twenty other score

Lent hands, and ever from the concourse more Of them, who hauled as if Troy's life depended On hastening forward that wherein it ended. So came the Horse to Troy, so was filled up

With retribution that sweet loving-cup Paris had drunk to Helen overseas — The cup which whoso drains must taste the lees.