Like one long hurt, who nurseth anger sore;Would that a curse, yea, wouldThe uttermost wrath of GodHad held those feet from walking Ilion’s shore!DIVERS GUARDS(talking).Odysseus or another, ’tis the guardWill weep for this. Aye, Hector will be hard.—What will he say?—He will suspect.—Suspect?What evil? What should make you fear?—’Twas we that left a passage clear.—A passage?—Yea, for these men’s way,Who came by night into the lines unchecked.

A sound of moaning outside in the darkness, which has been heard during the last few lines, now grows into articulate words.VOICE.Woe, woe!The burden of the wrath of fate!GUARDS.Ha, listen! Wait.Crouch on the ground; it may be yetOur man is drawing to the net.VOICE.P. 42, 1. 728, Voice of the wounded man outside.]— The puzzled and discouraged talk of the Guards round the fire, the groaning in the darkness without, the quick alarm among the men who had been careless before, and the slow realisation of disaster that follows—all these seem to me to be wonderfully indicated, though the severe poetic convention excludes any approach to what we, by modern prose standards, would call effective realism. Woe, woe!The burden of the hills of Thrace!LEADER.An ally? None of Hellene race.VOICE.Woe, woe!