Never shall state nor gold Shelter his heart from aching Whoso the Altar of Justice old Spurneth to Night unwaking. (_The Sinner suffers in his longing till at last Temptation overcomes him; as longing for Helen overcame Paris._) The tempting of misery forceth him, the dread Child of fore-scheming Woe! And help is vain; the fell desire within Is veilèd not, but shineth bright like Sin: And as false gold will show Black where the touchstone trieth, so doth fade His honour in God’s ordeal. Like a child, Forgetting all, he hath chased his wingèd bird, And planted amid his people a sharp thorn. And no God hears his prayer, or, have they heard, The man so base-beguiled They cast to scorn. Paris to Argos came; Love of a woman led him; So God’s altar he brought to shame, Robbing the hand that fed him. (_Helen’s flight; the visions seen by the King’s seers; the phantom of Helen and the King’s grief._) She hath left among her people a noise of shield and sword, A tramp of men armed where the long ships are moored; She hath ta’en in her goings Desolation as a dower; She hath stept, stept quickly, through the great gated Tower, And the thing that could not be, it hath been! And the Seers they saw visions, and they spoke of strange ill: “A Palace, a Palace; and a great King thereof: A bed, a bed empty, that was once pressed in love: And thou, thou, what art thou? Let us be, thou so still, Beyond wrath, beyond beseeching, to the lips reft of thee!” For she whom he desireth is beyond the deep sea, And a ghost in his castle shall be queen. Images in sweet guise Carven shall move him never, Where is Love amid empty eyes? Gone, gone for ever! (_His dreams and his suffering; but the War that he made caused greater and wider suffering._) But a shape that is a dream, ’mid the phantoms of the night, Cometh near, full of tears, bringing vain vain delight: For in vain when, desiring, he can feel the joy’s breath —Nevermore! Nevermore!—from his arms it vanisheth, On wings down the pathways of sleep. In the mid castle hall, on the hearthstone of the Kings, These griefs there be, and griefs passing these, But in each man’s dwelling of the host that sailed the seas, A sad woman waits; she has thoughts of many things, And patience in her heart lieth deep. Knoweth she them she sent, Knoweth she? Lo, returning, Comes in stead of the man that went Armour and dust of burning. (_The return of the funeral urns; the murmurs of the People._) And the gold-changer, Ares, who changeth quick for dead, Who poiseth his scale in the striving of the spears, Back from Troy sendeth dust, heavy dust, wet with tears, Sendeth ashes with men’s names in his urns neatly spread. And they weep over the men, and they praise them one by one, How this was a wise fighter, and this nobly-slain— “Fighting to win back another’s wife!” Till a murmur is begun, And there steals an angry pain Against Kings too forward in the strife.