So fiercely he reviled: Polydamas Wrathfully answered; for he shrank not, he, From answering to his face. A caitiff hound, A reptile fool, is he who fawns on men Before their faces, while his heart is black With malice, and, when they be gone, his tongue Backbites them. Openly Polydamas Flung back upon the prince his taunt and scoff: "O thou of living men most mischievous! Thy valour--quotha!--brings us misery! Thine heart endures, and will endure, that strife Should have no limit, save in utter ruin Of fatherland and people for thy sake! Ne'er may such wantwit valour craze my soul! Be mine to cherish wise discretion aye, A warder that shall keep mine house in peace." Indignantly he spake, and Paris found No word to answer him, for conscience woke Remembrance of all woes he had brought on Troy, And should bring; for his passion-fevered heart Would rather hail quick death than severance From Helen the divinely fair, although For her sake was it that the sons of Troy Even then were gazing from their towers to see The Argives and Achilles drawing nigh. But no long time thereafter came to them Memnon the warrior-king, and brought with him A countless host of swarthy Aethiops. From all the streets of Troy the Trojans flocked Glad-eyed to gaze on him, as seafarers, With ruining tempest utterly forspent, See through wide-parting clouds the radiance Of the eternal-wheeling Northern Wain; So joyed the Troyfolk as they thronged around, And more than all Laomedon's son, for now Leapt in his heart a hope, that yet the ships Might by those Aethiop men be burned with fire; So giantlike their king was, and themselves So huge a host, and so athirst for fight. Therefore with all observance welcomed he The strong son of the Lady of the Dawn With goodly gifts and with abundant cheer. So at the banquet King and Hero sat And talked, this telling of the Danaan chiefs, And all the woes himself had suffered, that Telling of that strange immortality By the Dawn-goddess given to his sire, Telling of the unending flow and ebb Of the Sea-mother, of the sacred flood Of Ocean fathomless-rolling, of the bounds Of Earth that wearieth never of her travail, Of where the Sun-steeds leap from orient waves, Telling withal of all his wayfaring From Ocean's verge to Priam's wall, and spurs Of Ida. Yea, he told how his strong hands Smote the great army of the Solymi Who barred his way, whose deed presumptuous brought Upon their own heads crushing ruin and woe. So told he all that marvellous tale, and told Of countless tribes and nations seen of him. And Priam heard, and ever glowed his heart Within him; and the old lips answering spake: "Memnon, the Gods are good, who have vouchsafed To me to look upon thine host, and thee Here in mine halls. O that their grace would so Crown this their boon, that I might see my foes