Page:Aeneid (Conington 1866).djvu/80

The deep courts wail with women's cries:
The clamour strikes the spangled skies.
Pale matrons run from place to place,
And clasp the doors in wild embrace.
Strong as his father, Pyrrhus strains,
Nor bar nor guard his force sustains:
The hacked door reels 'neath blow on blow,
Breaks from its hinges, and lies low.
Force wins her footing: in they rush,
The Danaan hordes, the foremost crush,
And deluge with an armed tide
The spacious level far and wide.
Less fierce when, breaking from its bounds,
The water surges o'er the mounds,
Down pours it, tumbling in a heap,
O'er all the fields with headlong sweep,
And whirls before it fold and sheep.
These eyes beheld fell Pyrrhus there
Intoxicate with gore,
Beheld the curst Atridan pair
Within the sacred door,
Beheld pale Hecuba, and those
The brides her hundred children chose,
And dying Priam at the shrine
Staining the hearth he made divine.
Those fifty nuptial chambers fair,
That promised many a princely heir,
Those pillared doors in pride erect,
With gold and spoils barbaric decked,
Lie smoking on the ground: the Greek
Is potent, where the fires are weak.

Perhaps you ask of Priam's fate:
He, when he sees his town o'erthrown,
Greeks bursting through his palace-gate
And thronging chambers once his own,