SEVENTH STAVE

What weariness of wind and wave and foam

Was to be for Odysseus ere his home

Of scrub and crag and scanty pasturage

He saw again! What stress of pilgrimage

Through roaring waterways and cities of men,

What sojourn among folk beyond the ken

Of mortal seafarers in homelier seas,

More trodden lands! Sure, none had earned his ease

As he, that windless morning when he drew

Near silent Ithaca, gray in misty blue,

And wondered on the old familiar scene,

Which was to him as it had never been

Aforetime. Say, had he but had inkling

That in this hour all that long wandering

Of his was self-ensured, had he been bold

To plan and carry what must now be told

Of this too hardy champion? Solve it you

Whose chronicling is over. Mine's to do.

All day until the setting of the sun,

Devising how to use what he had won

Odysseus stood; for nothing within walls

Was hid, he knew the very trumpet-calls

Wherewith they turned the guard out, and the cries

The sentries used to hearten or advise

The city in the watches of the night.

Once in, no hope for Ilios; but his plight

No better stood for that, since no way in

Could he conceive, nor entry hope to win

For any force enough to seize the gate

And open for the host.

But then some Fate,

Or, some men say, Athené the gray-eyed,

Ever his friend, never far from his side,

Prompted him look about him. Then he heeds

A stork set motionless in the dry reeds

That lift their withered arms, a skeleton host,

Long after winter and her aching frost

Are gone, and rattle in the spring's soft breeze

Dry bones, as if to daunt the budding trees

And warn them of the summer's wrath to come.

Still sat the bird, as fast asleep or numb

With cold, her head half-buried in her breast,

With close-shut eyes: a dead bird on the nest,

Arrow-shot — for behold! a wound she bore

Mid-breast, which stooping to, to see the more,

Lo, forth from it came busy, one by one,

Light-moving ants! So she to her death had gone

These many days; and there where she lost life

Her carrion shell with it again was rife.

So teems the earth, that ere our clay be rotten

New hosts sweep clean the hearth, our deeds forgotten.

But stooping still, Odysseus saw her not

Nor her brisk tenantry; afar his thought,

And after it his vision, crossed the plain

And lit on Ilios, dim and lapt in rain,

Piled up like blocks which Titans rear to mark

Where hero of their breed sits stiff and stark,

Spear in dead hand, and dead chin on dead knees;

And “Ha,” cried he, “proud hinderer of our ease,

Now hold I thee within my hollowed hand!”

Straightway returning, Troy's destruction planned,

He sends for one Epeios, craftsman good,

And bids him frame him out a horse in wood,

Big-bellied as a ship of sixty oars

Such as men use for traffic, not in wars,

Nor piracy, but roomy, deep in the hold,

Where men may shelter if needs be from cold,

Or sleep between their watches. “Scant not you,”

He said, “your timber not your sweat. Drive through

This horse for me, Epeios, as if we

Awaited it to give the word for sea

And Hellas and our wives and children dear;

For this is true, without it we stay here

Another ten-year shift, if by main force

We would take Troy, but ten days with my horse.”

So to their task Epeios and his teams

Went valiantly, and heaved and hauled great beams

Of timber from far Ida, and hacked amain

And rought the framework out. Then to it again

They went with adzes and their smoothing tools,

And made all shapely; next bored for their dools

With augurs, and made good stock on to stock

With mortise and with dovetail. Last, they lock

The frames with clamps, the nether to the upper,

And body forth a horse from crest to crupper

In outline.

Now their ribbing must be shaped

With axe to take the round, first rought, then scraped

With adzes, then deep-mortised in the frame

To bear the weight of so much mass, whose fame

When all was won, the Earth herself might quake,

Supporting on her broad breast. Now they take

Planks sawn and smoothed, and set them over steam

Of cauldrons to be supple. These to the beam

Above they rivet fast, and bend them down

Till from the belly more they seem to have grown

Than in it to be ended, so well sunk

And grooved they be. There's for the horse's trunk.

But as for head and legs, these from the block

Epeios carved, and fixed them on the stock

With long pins spigotted and clamps of steel;

And then the tail, downsweeping to the heel,

He carved and rivetted in place. Yet more

He did; for cunningly he made a door

Beneath the belly of him, in a part

Where Nature lends her aid to sculptor's art,

And few would have the thought to look for it,

Or eyes so keen to find, if they'd the wit.

Greatly stood he, hogmaned, with wrinkled néck

And wrying jaw, as though upon the check

One rode him. On three legs he stood, with one

Pawing the air, as if his course to run

Was overdue. Almost you heard the champ

And clatter of the bit, almost the stamp

And scrape of hoof; almost his fretful crest

He seemed to toss on high. So much confest

The wondering host. “But where's the man to ride?”

They askt. Odysseus said, “He'll go inside.

Yet there shall seem a rider — nay, let two

Bespan so brave a back,” Epeios anew

He spurred, and had his horsemen as he would,

Two noble youths, star-frontletted, but nude

Of clothing, and unarmed, who sat as though

Centaurs not men, and with their knees did show

The road to travel. Next Odysseus bid,

“Gild thou me him, Epeios”; which he did,

And burnisht after, till he blazed afar

Like that great image which men hail for a star

Of omen holy, image without peer,

Chryselephantine Athené with her spear,

Shining o'er Athens; to which their course they set

When homeward faring through the seaways wet

From Poros or from Nauplia, or some

From the Eubœan gulf, or where the foam

Washes the feet of Sounion, on whose brow

Like a white crown the shafts burn even now.

Such was the shaping of the Horse of Wood,

The bane of Ilios.

Ordered now they stood

Midway between the ships and Troy, and cast

The lots, who should go in from first to last

Of all the chieftains chosen. And the lot

Leapt out of Diomede, so in he got

And sat up in the neck. Next Aias went,

Clasping his shins and blinking as he bent,

Working the ridges of his villainous brow,

Like puzzled, patient monkey on a bough

That peers with bald, far-seeing eyes, whose scope

And steadfastness seem there to mock our hope;

Next Antiklos, and next Meriones

The Cretan; next good Teukros. After these

Went Pyrrhos, Agamemnon, King of men,

Menestheus and Idomeneus, and then

King Menelaus; and Odysseus last

Entered the desperate doorway, and made fast.

And all the Achaian remnant, seeing their best

To this great venture finally addrest,

Stood awed in silence; but Nestor the old

Bade bring the victims, and these on the wold

In sight of Troy he slew, and so uplift

The smoke of fire, and bloodsmoke, as a gift

Acceptable to Him he hailed by name

Kronion, sky-dweller, who giveth fame,

Lord of the thunder; to Heré next, and Her,

The Maid of War and holy harbinger

Of Father Zeus, who bears the Ægis dread

And shakes it when the storm peals overhead

And lightning splits the firmament with fire;

Nor yet forgat Poseidon, dark-haired sire

Of all the seas, and of great Ocean's flow,

The girdler of the world. So back with slow

And pondered steps they all returned, and dark

Swallowed up Troy, and Horse, and them who stark

Abode within it. And the great stars shone

Out over sea and land; and speaking none,

Nursing his arms, nursing within his breast

His enterprise, each hero sat at rest

Ignorant of the world of day and night,

Or whether he should live to see the light,

Or see it but to perish in this cage.

Only Odysseus felt his heart engage

The blithelier for the peril. He was stuff

That thrives by daring, nor can dare enough.

Three days, three nights before the Skaian Gate

Sat they within their ambush, apt for fate;

Three days, three nights, the Trojans swarmed the walls

And towers or held high council in their halls

What this portended, this o'erweening mass

Reared up so high no man stretching could pass

His hand over the crupper, of such girth

Of haunch, to span the pair no man on earth

Could compass with both arms. But most their eyes

Were for the riders who in godlike guise

Went naked into battle, as Gods use,

Untrammel'd by our shifts of shields and shoes,

As if we dread the earth whereof we are.

Sons of God, these: for bore not each a star

Ablaze upon his forelock? Lo, they say,

Kastor and Polydeukes, who but they,

Come in to save their sister at the last,

And war for Troy, and root King Priam fast

In his demesne, him and his heirs for ever!

Now call they soothsayers to make endeavour

With engines of their craft to read the thing;

But others urge them hale it to the King —

“Let him dispose,” they say, “of it and us,

And order as he will, from Pergamos

To heave it o'er the sheer and bring to wreck;

Or burn with fire; or harbour to bedeck

The temple of some God: of three ways one.

Here it cannot abide to flout the sun

With arrogant flash for every beam of his.”

Herewith agreed the men of mysteries,

Raking the bloodsick earth to have the truth,

And getting what they lookt for, as in sooth

A man will do. So then they all fell to't

To hale with cords and lever foot by foot

The portent; and as frenzy frenzy breeds,

And what one has another thinks he needs,

So to a straining twenty other score

Lent hands, and ever from the concourse more

Of them, who hauled as if Troy's life depended

On hastening forward that wherein it ended.

So came the Horse to Troy, so was filled up

With retribution that sweet loving-cup

Paris had drunk to Helen overseas —

The cup which whoso drains must taste the lees.