Priam, to whom the story was unknown,
As dead, deplored his metamorphosed son.
A cenotaph his name and title kept,
And Hector round the tomb, with all his brothers, wept.
This pious office Paris did not share,
Absent alone, and author of the war,
Which, for the Spartan queen, the Grecians drew
To avenge the rape, and Asia to subdue.
A thousand ships were mann’d to sail the sea;
Nor had their just resentments found delay,
Had not the winds and waves opposed their way.
At Aulis, with united powers, they meet;
But there, cross winds or calms detain’d the fleet.
Now, while they raise an altar on the shore,
And Jove with solemn sacrifice adore,
A boding sign the priests and people see:
A snake of size immense ascends a tree,
And in the leafy summit spied a nest,
Which o’er her callow young a sparrow press’d;
Eight were the birds, unfledged; their mother flew
And hover’d round her care, but still in view,
Till the fierce reptile first devour’d the brood;
Then seized the fluttering dam, and drank her blood.
This dire ostent the fearful people view;
Calchas alone, by Phoebus taught, foreknew
What heaven decreed; and with a smiling glance,
Thus gratulates to Greece her happy chance:
“Oh Argives, we shall conquer; Troy is ours,
But long delays shall first afflict our powers;
Nine years of labour the nine birds portend,
The tenth shall in the town’s destruction end.”
The serpent, which his maw obscene had fill’d,
The branches in his curl’d embraces held;
But, as in spires he stood, he turn’d to stone;
The stony snake retain’d the figure still his own.
Yet, not for this, the wind-bound navy weigh’d,
Slack were their sails, and Neptune disobey’d.
Some thought him loth the town should be destroy’d,
Whose building had his hands divine employ’d:
Not so the seer, who knew, and known foreshow’d,
The virgin Phoebe, with a virgin’s blood
Must first be reconciled. The common cause
Prevail’d, and pity yielding to the laws,
Fair Iphigenia, the devoted maid,
Was, by the weeping priests, in linen robes array’d.
All mourn her fate, but no relief appear’d;
The royal victim bound, the knife already rear’d
When that offended power, who caused their wo,
Relenting ceased her wrath, and stopp’d the coming blow.
A mist before the ministers she cast,
And, in the virgin’s room, a hind she placed.
The oblation slain, and Phoebe reconciled,
The storm was hush’d, and dimpled ocean smiled:
A favourable gale arose from shore,
Which to the port desired the Grecian galleys bore.