low, those towered cities brought to dust. Yet, every day the
swanlike daughter of Leda comes out on the battlements, and looks
down at the tide of war. The greybeards wonder at her loveliness,
and she stands by the side of the king. In his chamber of stained
ivory lies her leman. He is polishing his dainty armour, and
combing the scarlet plume. With squire and page, her husband
passes from tent to tent. She can see his bright hair, and hears,
or fancies that she hears, that clear cold voice. In the courtyard
below, the son of Priam is buckling on his brazen cuirass. The
white arms of Andromache are around his neck. He sets his helmet
on the ground, lest their babe should be frightened. Behind the
embroidered curtains of his pavilion sits Achilles, in perfumed
raiment, while in harness of gilt and silver the friend of his soul
arrays himself to go forth to the fight. From a curiously carven
chest that his mother Thetis had brought to his ship-side, the Lord
of the Myrmidons takes out that mystic chalice that the lip of man
had never touched, and cleanses it with brimstone, and with fresh
water cools it, and, having washed his hands, fills with black wine
its burnished hollow, and spills the thick grape-blood upon the
ground in honour of Him whom at Dodona barefooted prophets
worshipped, and prays to Him, and knows not that he prays in vain,
and that by the hands of two knights from Troy, Panthous' son,
Euphorbus, whose love-locks were looped with gold, and the Priamid,
the lion-hearted, Patroklus, the comrade of comrades, must meet his
doom. Phantoms, are they? Heroes of mist and mountain? Shadows
in a song? No: they are real. Action! What is action? It dies
at the moment of its energy. It is a base concession to fact. The
world is made by the singer for the dreamer.

ERNEST. While you talk it seems to me to be so.