[The orphan hero looks on]

Fame the winds of War have blown

Of his savaged ancestral home

Each effigy lord he recognizes

Priam and Agamemnon he apprises

Fierce Achilles he who defies kings

Memory of battle in his mind rings

.

Even in these alien lands

His folk’s woe painted by many hands

His king Priam unhappy and old

On these mute walls his sorrow told

Trojan grief and Tyrian pity

Memorialized on the walls of this city

.

He saw through eyes in tears

Reading the holocaust of nine years

An empty picture fed his mind

Filled his soul with sad remind

Saw the fainting Grecians yield

Saw trembling Trojans quit the field

Saw Achilles hounding the plain

Saw hooves and wheels over the slain

The tents of Rhesus his mind reviewed

The pale sails betrayed to nightly view

Saw Diomedes whose sword hewed

Guards butchered a chief skewered

Then took the horses of haste

Of Troy they’d taste

Or drink the Xanthian flood [1]

Drowning in a welter of blood

Saw where Troilus defied Achilles

Winging down to Death’s house

Dragged by his neck and hair

Suffering the fate of the hare

His speared form a guttering wound

His blood inscribed the dusty ground

.

Saw Trojan dames in woe’s possession

To Pallas' shrine in long procession

In hopes to reconcile their heavenly foe

Fate’s unwound scroll they didn’t know

With eyes gushing with despair

With beaten breasts and rent hair

Rich vests for presents they bear

To a stern goddess unmoved by prayer

.

He saw in the eye of his memory hall

Achilles ride thrice around the wall

Dragging the butchered hero of Troy

Hector slain with a mirthless joy

.

In effigy Priam bent and old

Offers for his slain son gold

In art so well wrought

A moan from Aeneas it brought

End 13

Notes

-1. Xanthus was a river in Lycia, at the mouth of which was a city of the same name. the name may mean “yellow-haired” or blonde, has been assigned to mortal and mythical beings, most notably a winged horse of the zephyrs. Do note that rivers were often vested with god qualities, as deities, who might actually battle heroes and impregnate mortal women with the seed of a hero. Achilles was said to have fought the river Scamander, and most famously the river Xanthus, a deity which tried to drown Achilles for choking its banks with dead Trojans.