=204. Helen surveys the Grecian Host.= Meantime, Iris, the goddess of the rainbow, summons Helen to view the impending duel. At her loom in the Trojan palace the ill-starred daughter of Leda is sitting, weaving in a golden web her own sad story. At memory of her former husband's love, her home, her parents, the princess drops a tear; then, softly sighing, turns her footsteps to the Scæan gate. No word is said of her matchless beauty, but what it was Homer shows us by its effect. For as she approaches the tower where aged Priam and his gray-haired chieftains sit, these cry,-- "No wonder such celestial charms For nine long years have set the world in arms; What winning graces! what majestic mien! She moves a goddess, and she looks a queen. Yet hence, oh Heaven! convey that fatal face, And from destruction save the Trojan race."[286] --Words reëchoed by our English Marlowe, two thousand years later: Was this the face that launched a thousand ships, And burnt the topless towers of Ilium? Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.-- Her lips suck forth my soul: see, where it flies! Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again! Here will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips, And all is dross that is not Helena.... Oh, thou art fairer than the evening air Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars; Brighter art thou than flaming Jupiter When he appeared to hapless Semele;... And none but thou shalt be my paramour![287] Priam, receiving his daughter-in-law tenderly, inquires of her the names of one and another of the Greeks moving on the plain below.-- "Who, that Around whose brow such martial graces shine, So tall, so awful, and almost divine?"[2] "The son of Atreus," answers she, shamefacedly. "Agamemnon, king of kings, my brother once, before my days of shame." "What's he whose arms lie scattered on the plain? Broad is his breast, his shoulders larger spread, Though great Atrides overtops his head. Nor yet appear his care and conduct small; From rank to rank he moves and orders all."[2] "That is Ulysses," replies Helen, "of the barren isle of Ithaca; but his fame for wisdom fills the earth." Old Antenor, seated by Priam's side, thereupon recalls the modesty and the restrained but moving eloquence of the wondrous son of Laërtes. The king then asked, as yet the camp he viewed, "What chief is that, with giant strength endued; Whose brawny shoulders, and whose swelling chest, And lofty stature, far exceed the rest?"[288] "That is Ajax the great," responds the beauteous queen, "himself a host, bulwark of the Achæans." And she points out Idomeneus, also, the godlike king of Crete; then scans the array for her own dear brothers Castor and Pollux;--in vain, for them the life-giving earth held fast there in Lacedæmon, their native land.