But still Laocoon ceased not to exhort His countrymen to burn the Horse with fire: They would not hear, for dread of the Gods' wrath. But then a yet more hideous punishment Athena visited on his hapless sons. A cave there was, beneath a rugged cliff Exceeding high, unscalable, wherein Dwelt fearful monsters of the deadly brood Of Typhon, in the rock-clefts of the isle Calydna that looks Troyward from the sea. Thence stirred she up the strength of serpents twain, And summoned them to Troy. By her uproused They shook the island as with earthquake: roared The sea; the waves disparted as they came. Onward they swept with fearful-flickering tongues: Shuddered the very monsters of the deep: Xanthus' and Simois' daughters moaned aloud, The River-nymphs: the Cyprian Queen looked down In anguish from Olympus. Swiftly they came Whither the Goddess sped them: with grim jaws Whetting their deadly fangs, on his hapless sons Sprang they. All Trojans panic-stricken fled, Seeing those fearsome dragons in their town. No man, though ne'er so dauntless theretofore, Dared tarry; ghastly dread laid hold on all Shrinking in horror from the monsters. Screamed The women; yea, the mother forgat her child, Fear-frenzied as she fled: all Troy became One shriek of fleers, one huddle of jostling limbs: The streets were choked with cowering fugitives. Alone was left Laocoon with his sons, For death's doom and the Goddess chained their feet. Then, even as from destruction shrank the lads, Those deadly fangs had seized and ravined up The twain, outstretching to their sightless sire Agonized hands: no power to help had he. Trojans far off looked on from every side Weeping, all dazed. And, having now fulfilled Upon the Trojans Pallas' awful hest, Those monsters vanished 'neath the earth; and still Stands their memorial, where into the fane They entered of Apollo in Pergamus The hallowed. Therebefore the sons of Troy Gathered, and reared a cenotaph for those Who miserably had perished. Over it Their father from his blind eyes rained the tears: Over the empty tomb their mother shrieked, Boding the while yet worse things, wailing o'er The ruin wrought by folly of her lord, Dreading the anger of the Blessed Ones. As when around her void nest in a brake In sorest anguish moans the nightingale Whose fledglings, ere they learned her plaintive song, A hideous serpent's fangs have done to death, And left the mother anguish, endless woe, And bootless crying round her desolate home; So groaned she for her children's wretched death, So moaned she o'er the void tomb; and her pangs Were sharpened by her lord's plight stricken blind.