This said, the careful servant of the king, Asphalion, pour’d on th’ issue of the spring; And all to ready feast set ready hand. But Helen now on new device did stand, Infusing straight a medicine to their wine, That, drowning care and angers; did decline All thought of ill. Who drunk her cup could shed All that day not a tear, no not if dead That day his father or his mother were, Not if his brother, child, or chiefest dear, He should see murder’d then before his face. Such useful medicines, only borne in grace Of what was good, would Helen ever have. And this juice to her Polydamna gave The wife of Thoon, an Ægyptian born, Whose rich earth herbs of medicine do adorn In great abundance. Many healthful are, And many baneful. Ev’ry man is there A good physician out of Nature’s grace, For all the nation sprung of Pæon’s race. When Helen then her medicine had infus’d, She bad pour wine to it, and this speech us’d: “Atrides, and these good men’s sons, great Jove Makes good and ill one after other move, In all things earthly; for he can do all. The woes past, therefore, he so late let fall, The comforts he affords us let us take; Feast, and, with fit discourses, merry make. Nor will I other use. As then our blood Griev’d for Ulysses, since he was so good, Since he was good, let us delight to hear How good he was, and what his suff’rings were; Though ev’ry fight, and ev’ry suff’ring deed, Patient Ulysses underwent, exceed My woman’s pow’r to number, or to name. But what he did, and suffer’d, when he came Amongst the Trojans, where ye Grecians all Took part with suff’rance, I in part can call To your kind memories. How with ghastly wounds Himself he mangled, and the Trojan bounds, Thrust thick with enemies, adventur’d on, His royal shoulders having cast upon Base abject weeds, and enter’d like a slave. Then, beggar-like, he did of all men crave, And such a wretch was, as the whole Greek fleet Brought not besides. And thus through ev’ry street He crept discov’ring, of no one man known. And yet through all this diff’rence, I alone Smoked his true person, talk’d with him; but he Fled me with wiles still. Nor could we agree, Till I disclaim’d him quite; and so (as mov’d With womanly remorse of one that prov’d So wretched an estate, whate’er he were) Won him to take my house. And yet ev’n there, Till freely I, to make him doubtless, swore A pow’rful oath, to let him reach the shore Of ships and tents before Troy understood, I could not force on him his proper good. But then I bath’d and sooth’d him, and he then Confess’d, and told me all; and, having slain A number of the Trojan guards, retir’d, And reach’d the fleet, for sleight and force admir’d. Their husbands’ deaths by him the Trojan wives Shriek’d for; but I made triumphs for their lives, For then my heart conceiv’d, that once again I should reach home; and yet did still retain Woe for the slaughters Venus made for me, When both my husband, my Hermione,