Chapter 21 - Page 2

lighted his
funeral pyre. Philoctetes had joined the Grecian expedition
against Troy, but had accidentally wounded his foot with one of
the poisoned arrows, and the smell from his wound proved so
offensive that his companions carried him to the Isle of Lemnos
and left him there. Diomedes was now sent to induce him to
rejoin the army. He succeeded. Philoctetes was cured of his
wound by Machaon, and Paris was the first victim of the fatal
arrows. In his distress Paris bethought him of one whom in his
prosperity he had forgotten. This was the nymph OEnone, whom he
had married when a youth, and had abandoned for the fatal beauty
Helen. OEnone, remembering the wrongs she had suffered, refused
to heal the wound, and Paris went back to Troy and died. OEnone
quickly repented, and hastened after him with remedies, but came
too late, and in her grief hung herself. Tennyson has chosen OEnone as the subject of a short poem; but he
has omitted the concluding part of the story, the return of Paris
wounded, her cruelty and subsequent repentance. "__________Hither came at noon
Mournful OENONE, wandering forlorn
Of Paris, once her playmate on the hills.
Her cheek had lost the rose, and round her neck
Floated her hair, or seemed to float in rest.
She, leaning on a fragment twined with vine,
Sang to the stillness, till the mountain-shade
Sloped downward to her seat from the upper cliff.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
"'O Mother Ida, many-fountain'd Ida,
Dear Mother Ida, hearken ere I die.
I waited underneath the dawning hills,
Aloft the mountain lawn was dewy-dark,
And dewy-dark aloft the mountain pine:
Beautiful Paris, evil-hearted Paris,
Leading a jet-black goat, white-horned, white-hooved,
Come up from reedy Simois, all alone. "'O Mother Ida, hearken ere I die.
Far off the torrent called me from the cliff:
Far up the solitary morning smote
The streaks of virgin snow. With downdropt eyes
I sat alone: white-breasted like a star
Fronting the dawn he moved; a leopard-skin
Drooped from his shoulder, but his sunny hair
Clustered about his temples like a God's,
And his cheek brightened as the foambow brightens
When the wind blows the foam, and all my heart
Went forth to embrace him coming, ere he came. "'Dear Mother Ida, hearken ere I die.
He smiled, and opening out his milk-white palm
Disclosed a fruit of pure Hesperian gold,
That smelt ambrosially, and while I looked
And listened, the full-flowing river of speech
Came down upon my heart. "My own OENONE,
Beautiful-browed OENONE, my own soul,
Behold this fruit, whose gleaming rind ingraven
'For the most fair,' would seem award it thine
As lovelier than whatever Oread haunt
The knolls of Ida, loveliest in all grace