Then something else, Much greater and more terrible, was forced Upon us, troubling our unseeing spirits. Laocoön, allotted priest of Neptune, Was slaying a great bull beside the altars, When suddenly, over the tranquil deep From Tenedos,--I shudder even now, Recalling it--there came a pair of serpents With monstrous coils, breasting the sea, and aiming Together for the shore. Their heads and shoulders Rose over the waves, upright, with bloody crests, The rest of them trailing along the water, Looping in giant spirals; the foaming sea Hissed under their motion. And they reached the land, Their burning eyes suffused with blood and fire, Their darting tongues licking the hissing mouths. Pale at the sight, we fled. But they went on Straight toward Laocoön, and first each serpent Seized in its coils his two young sons, and fastened The fangs in those poor bodies. And the priest Struggled to help them, weapons in his hand. They seized him, bound him with their mighty coils, Twice round his waist, twice round his neck, they squeezed With scaly pressure, and still towered above him. Straining his hands to tear the knots apart, His chaplets stained with blood and the black poison, He uttered horrible cries, not even human, More like the bellowing of a bull, when, wounded It flees the altar, shaking from the shoulder The ill-aimed axe. And on the pair went gliding To the highest shrine, the citadel of Pallas, And vanished underneath the feet of the goddess And the circle of her shield. The people trembled Again; they said Laocoön deserved it, Having, with spear, profaned the sacred image. It must be brought to its place, they cried, the goddess Must be appeased. We broke the walls, exposing The city’s battlements, and all were busy Helping the work, with rollers underfoot And ropes around the neck. It climbed our walls, The deadly engine. Boys, unwedded girls Sang alleluias round it, all rejoicing To have a hand on the tow-rope. It came nearer, Threatening, gliding, into the very city. O motherland! O Ilium, home of gods, O walls of Troy! Four times it stopped, four times The sound of arms came from it, and we pressed on, Unheedful, blind in madness, till we set it, Ill-omened thing, on the citadel we worshipped. And even when Cassandra gave us warning, We never believed her; so a god had ordered. That day, our last, poor wretches, we were happy, Garlanding the temples of the gods All through the town.