Death's Songsters

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

When first that horse, within whose populous womb
The birth was death, o’ershadowed Troy with fate,
Her elders, dubious of its Grecian freight,
Brought Helen there to sing the songs of home:
She whispered, ‘Friends, I am alone; come, come!’
Then, crouched within, Ulysses waxed afraid,
And on his comrades’ quivering mouths he laid
His hands, and held them till the voice was dumb.

The same was he who, lashed to his own mast,
There where the sea-flowers screen the charnel-caves,
Beside the sirens’ singing island pass’d,
Till sweetness failed along the inveterate waves…
Say, soul,—are songs of Death no heaven to thee,
Nor shames her lip the cheek of Victory?

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