No More Learning

They in unfaltering train make towards Laocoon. And first the
serpents twine in their double embrace his two little children, and bite
deep in their wretched limbs; then him likewise, as he comes up to help
with arms in his hand, they seize and fasten in their enormous coils;
and now twice clasping his waist, twice encircling his neck with their
scaly bodies, they tower head and neck above him. He at once strains his
hands to tear their knots apart, his fillets spattered with foul black
venom; at once raises to heaven awful cries; as when, bellowing, a bull
shakes the wavering axe from his neck and runs wounded from the altar.
But the two snakes glide away to the high sanctuary and seek the fierce
Tritonian's citadel, [227-261]and take shelter under the goddess' feet
beneath the circle of her shield. Then indeed a strange terror thrills
in all our amazed breasts; and Laocoon, men say, hath fulfilled his
crime's desert, in piercing the consecrated wood and hurling his guilty
spear into its body. All cry out that the image must be drawn to its
home and supplication made to her deity. . . . We sunder the walls, and
lay open the inner city. All set to the work; they fix rolling wheels
under its feet, and tie hempen bands on its neck. The fated engine
climbs our walls, big with arms. Around it boys and unwedded girls chant
hymns and joyfully lay their hand on the rope. It moves up, and glides
menacing into the middle of the town. O native land!
O Ilium, house of
gods, and Dardanian city renowned in war! four times in the very gateway
did it come to a stand, and four times armour rang in its womb. Yet we
urge it on, mindless and infatuate, and plant the ill-ominous thing in
our hallowed citadel. Even then Cassandra opens her lips to the coming
doom, lips at a god's bidding never believed by the Trojans. We, the
wretched people, to whom that day was our last, hang the shrines of the
gods with festal boughs throughout the city. Meanwhile the heavens wheel
on, and night rises from the sea, wrapping in her vast shadow earth and
sky and the wiles of the Myrmidons; about the town the Teucrians are
stretched in silence; slumber laps their tired limbs.

'And now the Argive squadron was sailing in order from Tenedos, and in
the favouring stillness of the quiet moon sought the shores it knew;
when the royal galley ran out a flame, and, protected by the gods'
malign decrees, Sinon stealthily lets loose the imprisoned Grecians from
their barriers of pine; the horse opens and restores them to the air;
and joyfully issuing from the hollow wood, Thessander and Sthenelus the
captains, and terrible Ulysses, [262-295]slide down the dangling rope,
with Acamas and Thoas and Neoptolemus son of Peleus, and Machaon first
of all, and Menelaus, and Epeus himself the artificer of the treachery.
They sweep down the city buried in drunken sleep; the watchmen are cut
down, and at the open gates they welcome all their comrades, and unite
their confederate bands.

'It was the time when by the gift of God rest comes stealing first and
sweetest on unhappy men. In slumber, lo! before mine eyes Hector seemed
to stand by, deep in grief and shedding abundant tears; torn by the
chariot, as once of old, and black with gory dust, his swoln feet
pierced with the thongs. Ah me! in what guise was he! how changed from
the Hector who returns from putting on Achilles' spoils, or launching
the fires of Phrygia on the Grecian ships! with ragged beard and tresses
clotted with blood, and all the many wounds upon him that he received
around his ancestral walls. Myself too weeping I seemed to accost him
ere he spoke, and utter forth mournful accents: "O light of Dardania, O
surest hope of the Trojans, what long delay is this hath held thee?