Patroclus thus employ’d in cure of hurt Eurypylus, Both hosts are all for other wounds doubly contentious, One always labouring to expel, the other to invade. Nor could the broad dike of the Greeks, or that strong wall they made To guard their fleet, be long unras’d; because it was not rais’d By grave direction of the Gods, nor were their Deities prais’d (When they begun) with hecatombs, that then they might be sure (Their strength being season’d well with heav’n’s) it should have force t’ endure, And so, the safeguard of their fleet, and all their treasure there, Infallibly had been confirm’d; when, now, their bulwarks were Not only without pow’r of check to their assaulting foe (Ev’n now, as soon as they were built) but apt to overthrow; Such as, in very little time, shall bury all their sight And thought that ever they were made. As long as the despite Of great Æacides held up, and Hector went not down, And that by those two means stood safe king Priam’s sacred town, So long their rampire had some use, though now it gave some way; But when Troy’s best men suffer’d fate, and many Greeks did pay Dear for their suff’rance, then the rest home to their country turn’d, The tenth year of their wars at Troy, and Troy was sack’d and burn’d. And then the Gods fell to their fort; then they their pow’rs employ To ruin their work, and left less of that than they of Troy. Neptune and Phœbus tumbled down, from the Idalian hills, An inundation of all floods, that thence the broad sea fills On their huge rampire; in one glut, all these together roar’d, Rhesus, Heptaporus, Rhodius, Scamander the ador’d, Caresus, Simois, Grenicus, Æsepus; of them all Apollo open’d the rough mouths, and made their lusty fall Ravish the dusty champian, where many a helm and shield, And half-god race of men, were strew’d. And, that all these might yield Full tribute to the heav’nly work, Neptune and Phœbus won Jove to unburthen the black wombs of clouds, fill’d by the sun, And pour them into all their streams, that quickly they might send The huge wall swimming to the sea. Nine days their lights did spend To nights in tempests; and when all their utmost depth had made, Jove, Phœbus, Neptune, all came down, and all in state did wade To ruin of that impious fort. Great Neptune went before, Wrought with his trident, and the stones, trunks, roots of trees, he tore Out of the rampire, toss’d them all into the Hellespont, Ev’n all the proud toil of the Greeks, with which they durst confront The to-be shunnéd Deities, and not a stone remain’d Of all their huge foundations, all with the earth were plain’d. Which done, again the Gods turn’d back the silver-flowing floods By that vast channel, through whose vaults they pour’d abroad their broods, And cover’d all the ample shore again with dusty sand. And this the end was of that wall, where now so many a hand Was emptied of stones and darts, contending to invade; Where Clamour spent so high a throat; and where the fell blows made