From off the house; with such-like shot they now, beholding well The end anigh, all death at hand, make ready for the play: And gilded beams, the pomp and joy of fathers passed away. They roll adown, and other some with naked point and edge The nether doorways of the place in close arrayment hedge. 450 Blazed up our hearts again to aid this palace of a king, To stead their toil, to vanquished men a little help to bring. A door there was, a secret pass into the common way Of all King Priam's houses there, that at the backward lay As one goes by: in other days, while yet the lordship was, Hapless Andromache thereby unto the twain would pass Alone, or leading to the king Astyanax her boy. And thereby now I gain the tower, whence wretched men of Troy In helpless wise from out their hands were casting darts aloof. There was a tower, a sheer height down, builded from highest roof 460 Up toward the stars; whence we were wont on Troy to look adown, And thence away the Danaan ships, the Achæan tented town. Against the highest stage hereof the steel about we bear, Just where the joints do somewhat give: this from its roots we tear, And heave it up and over wall, whose toppling at the last Bears crash and ruin, and wide away the Danaans are down cast Beneath its fall: but more come on: nor drift of stones doth lack, Nor doth all kind of weapon-shot at any while grow slack. Lo, Pyrrhus in the very porch forth to the door doth pass Exulting; bright with glittering points and flashing of the brass; 470 --E'en as a snake to daylight come, on evil herbage fed, Who, swollen, 'neath the chilly soil hath had his winter bed, And now, his ancient armour doffed, and sleek with youth new found, With front upreared his slippery back he coileth o'er the ground Up 'neath the sun; his three-cleft tongue within his mouth gleams clear:-- And with him Periphas the huge, Achilles' charioteer, Now shield-bearer Automedon and all the Scyrian host Closed on the walls and on the roof the blazing firebrands tost. Pyrrhus in forefront of them all catches a mighty bill, Beats in the hardened door, and tears perforce from hinge and sill 480 The brazen leaves; a beam hewn through, wide gaped the oak hard knit Into a great-mouthed window there, and through the midst of it May men behold the inner house; the long halls open lie; Bared is the heart of Priam's home, the place of kings gone by; And close against the very door all armèd men they see. That inner house indeed was mazed with wail and misery, The inmost chambers of the place an echoing hubbub hold Of women's cries, whose clamour smites the far-off stars of gold, And through the house so mighty great the fearful mothers stray, And wind their arms about the doors, and kisses on them lay. 490