And therefore first began:--"O Teucer's race! } Who durst thy faultless figure thus deface? } What heart could wish, what hand inflict, this dire disgrace? } 'Twas famed, that, in our last and fatal night, Your single prowess long sustained the fight, Till, tired, not forced, a glorious fate you chose, And fell upon a heap of slaughtered foes. But, in remembrance of so brave a deed, A tomb and funeral honours I decreed; Thrice called your manes on the Trojan plains: The place your armour and your name retains. Your body too I sought, and, had I found, Designed for burial in your native ground." The ghost replied:--"Your piety has paid All needful rites, to rest my wandering shade: But cruel Fate, and my more cruel wife, To Grecian swords betrayed my sleeping life. These are the monuments of Helen's love-- The shame I bear below, the marks I bore above. You know in what deluding joys we past The night, that was by heaven decreed our last. For, when the fatal horse, descending down, Pregnant with arms, o'erwhelmed the unhappy town, She feigned nocturnal orgies; left my bed, And, mixed with Trojan dames, the dances led; Then, waving high her torch, the signal made, Which roused the Grecians from their ambuscade. With watching overworn, with cares oppressed, } Unhappy I had laid me down to rest, } And heavy sleep my weary limbs possessed. } Meantime my worthy wife our arms mislaid, And, from beneath my head, my sword conveyed; The door unlatched, and, with repeated calls, Invites her former lord within my walls. Thus in her crime her confidence she placed, And with new treasons would redeem the past. What need I more? Into the room they ran, And meanly murdered a defenceless man. Ulysses, basely born, first led the way.-- } Avenging powers! with justice if I pray, } That fortune be their own another day!-- } But answer you; and in your turn relate, What brought you, living, to the Stygian state. Driven by the winds and errors of the sea, } Or did you heaven's superior doom obey? } Or tell what other chance conducts your way, } To view, with mortal eyes, our dark retreats, Tumults and torments of the infernal seats." While thus, in talk, the flying hours they pass, The sun had finished more than half his race: And they, perhaps, in words and tears had spent The little time of stay which heaven had lent: But thus the Sibyl chides their long delay:-- "Night rushes down, and headlong drives the day: 'Tis here, in different paths, the way divides; The right to Pluto's golden palace guides; The left to that unhappy region tends, } Which to the depth of Tartarus descends-- }