An arrow, feather’d best for flight and yet that never flew, Strong headed, and most apt to pierce; then took he up his bow, And nock’d his shaft, the ground whence all their future grief did grow. When, praying to his God the Sun, that was in Lycia bred, And king of archers, promising that he the blood would shed Of full an hundred first-fall’n lambs, all offer’d to his name, When to Zelia’s sacred walls from rescu’d Troy he came, He took his arrow by the nock, and to his bended breast[1] The oxy sinew close he drew, ev’n till the pile did rest Upon the bosom of the bow; and as that savage prise His strength constrain’d into an orb, as if the wind did rise The coming of it made a noise, the sinew-forgéd string Did give a mighty twang, and forth the eager shaft did sing, Affecting speediness of flight, amongst the Achive throng. Nor were the blesséd Heav’nly Pow’rs unmindful of thy wrong, O Menelaus, but, in chief, Jove’s seed: the Pillager, Stood close before, and slack’d the force the arrow did confer, With as much care and little hurt, as doth a mother use, And keep off from her babe, when sleep doth through his pow’rs diffuse His golden humour, and th’ assaults of rude and busy flies She still checks with her careful hand; for so the shaft she plies That on the buttons made of gold, which made his girdle fast, And where his curets double were, the fall of it she plac’d. And thus much proof she put it to: the buckle made of gold; The belt it fast’ned, bravely wrought; his curets’ double fold; And last, the charméd plate he wore, which help’d him more than all, And, ’gainst all darts and shafts bestow’d, was to his life a wall; So, through all these, the upper skin the head did only race; Yet forth the blood flow’d, which did much his royal person grace, And show’d upon his ivory skin, as doth a purple dye Laid, by a dame of Caïra, or lovely Mæony, On ivory, wrought in ornaments to deck the cheeks of horse; Which in her marriage room must lie; whose beauties have such force That they are wish’d of many knights, but are such precious things, That they are kept for horse that draw the chariots of kings, Which horse, so deck’d, the charioteer esteems a grace to him; Like these, in grace, the blood upon thy solid thighs did swim, O Menelaus, down by calves and ankles to the ground. For nothing decks a soldier so, as doth an honour’d wound. Yet, fearing he had far’d much worse, the hair stood up on end On Agamemnon, when he saw so much black blood descend. And stiff’ned with the like dismay was Menelaus too, But seeing th’ arrow’s stale without, and that the head did go No further than it might be seen, he call’d his spirits again; Which Agamemnon marking not but thinking he was slain, He grip’d his brother by the hand, and sigh’d as he would break, Which sigh the whole host took from him, who thus at last did speak: “O dearest brother, is’t for this, that thy death must be wrought, Wrought I this truce? For this has thou the single combat fought