She pluck'd a strip of smooth white bark and fair,
And many signs and woful graved she,
A message of the evil things to be.
Then deftly closed the birch-bark, fold on fold,
And bound the tokens well and cunningly,
Three times and four times, with a thread of gold.

XIX.

"Give these to Argive Helen's hand," she cried:
And so embraced her child, and with no fear
Beheld him leaping down the mountain-side,
Like a king's son that goes to hunt the deer,
Clad softly, and in either hand a spear,
With two swift-footed hounds that follow'd him,
So leap'd he down the grassy slopes and sheer,
And won the precinct of the forest dim.

XX.

He trod that ancient path his sire had trod,
Far, far below he saw the sea, the town;
He moved as light as an immortal god,
For mansions in Olympus gliding down.
He left the shadow of the forest brown,
And through the shallow waters did he cross,
And stood, ere twilight fell, within the crown
Of towers, the sacred keep of Ilios.

XXI.