How shall I greet thy conquering face?
How nor a fulsome praise obtrude, Nor stint the meed of gratitude?
For mortal men who fall to ill Take little heed of open truth, But seek unto its semblance still:
The show of weeping and of ruth To the forlorn will all men pay, But, of the grief their eyes display, Nought to the heart doth pierce its way.
And, with the joyous, they beguile Their lips unto a feigned smile, And force a joy, unfelt the while;But he who as a shepherd wise Doth know his flock, can ne'er misread Truth in the falsehood of his eyes, Who veils beneath a kindly guise A lukewarm love in deed.
And thou, our leader-when of yore Thou badest Greece go forth to war For Helen's sake-I dare avow That then I held thee not as now;That to my vision thou didst seem Dyed in the hues of disesteem.
I held thee for a pilot ill, And reckless, of thy proper will, Endowing others doomed to die With vain and forced audacity!
Now from my heart, ungrudgingly, To those that wrought, this word be said-Well fall the labour ye have sped-
Let time and search, O king, declare What men within thy city's bound Were loyal to the kingdom's care, And who were faithless found.
AGAMEMNON (still standing in the chariot)First, as is meet, a king's All-hail be said To Argos, and the gods that guard the land-Gods who with me availed to speed us home, With me availed to wring from Priam's town The due of justice. In the court of heaven The gods in conclave sat and judged the cause, Not from a pleader's tongue, and at the close, Unanimous into the urn of doom This sentence gave, On Ilion and her men, Death: and where hope drew nigh to pardon's urn No hand there was to cast a vote therein.
And still the smoke of fallen Ilion Rises in sight of all men, and the flame Of Ate's hecatomb is living yet, And where the towers in dusty ashes sink, Rise the rich fumes of pomp and wealth consumed For this must all men pay unto the gods The meed of mindful hearts and gratitude:
For by our hands the meshes of revenge Closed on the prey, and for one woman's sake Troy trodden by the Argive monster lies-The foal, the shielded band that leapt the wall, What time with autumn sank the Pleiades.