The arched vaults re-echo to the skies; Sad matrons wand'ring through the spacious rooms Embrace and kiss the posts; then Pyrrhus comes; Full of his father, neither men nor walls His force sustain; the torn portcullis falls; Then from the hinge their strokes the gates divorce, 480 And where the way they cannot find, they force. Not with such rage a swelling torrent flows Above his banks, th'opposing dams o'erthrows, Depopulates the fields, the cattle, sheep, Shepherds and folds, the foaming surges sweep. And now between two sad extremes I stood, Here Pyrrhus and th'Atridæ drunk with blood, There th'hapless queen amongst an hundred dames, 488 And Priam quenching from his wounds those flames Which his own hands had on the altar laid; Then they the secret cabinets invade, Where stood the fifty nuptial beds, the hopes Of that great race; the golden posts, whose tops Old hostile spoils adorn'd, demolished lay, Or to the foe, or to the fire a prey. Now Priam's fate perhaps you may inquire: Seeing his empire lost, his Troy on fire, And his own palace by the Greeks possess'd, Arms long disused his trembling limbs invest; Thus on his foes he throws himself alone, 500 Not for their fate, but to provoke his own: There stood an altar open to the view Of heaven, near which an aged laurel grew, Whose shady arms the household gods embraced, Before whose feet the queen herself had cast With all her daughters, and the Trojan wives, As doves whom an approaching tempest drives And frights into one flock; but having spied Old Priam clad in youthful arms, she cried, 'Alas! my wretched husband! what pretence 510 To bear those arms? and in them what defence? Such aid such times require not, when again If Hector were alive, he lived in vain; Or here we shall a sanctuary find, Or as in life, we shall in death be join'd.' Then, weeping, with kind force held and embraced, And on the secret seat the king she placed. Meanwhile Polites, one of Priam's sons, Flying the rage of bloody Pyrrhus, runs Through foes and swords, and ranges all the court 520 And empty galleries, amazed and hurt; Pyrrhus pursues him, now o'ertakes, now kills, And his last blood in Priam's presence spills. The king (though him so many deaths enclose) Nor fear, nor grief, but indignation shows; 'The gods requite thee (if within the care Of those above th'affairs of mortals are), Whose fury on the son but lost had been, Had not his parents' eyes his murder seen: Not that Achilles (whom thou feign'st to be 530 Thy father) so inhuman was to me; He blush'd, when I the rights of arms implored; To me my Hector, me to Troy, restored.' This said, his feeble arm a jav'lin flung, Which on the sounding shield, scarce ent'ring, rung. Then Pyrrhus; 'Go a messenger to hell Of my black deeds, and to my father tell The acts of his degen'rate race.' So through