He all that time among the sewers of Troy

Scouring for scraps. A man so venerable

He might have been Priam’s self, but Priam was dead,

Troy taken. His arms grew meagre as a boy’s,

And all that flourished in that hollow famine

Was his long, white, round beard. Oh, sturdily

He swung his staff and sent the bold rats skipping

Across the scurfy hills and worm-wet valleys,

Crying: “Achilles, Ajax, turn and fight!

Stop, cowards!” Till his cries, dazed and confounded,

Flew back at him with: “Coward, turn and fight!”

And the wild Greeks yelled round him.

Yet he withstood them, a brave, mad old man,

And fought the rats for Troy. The light was rat-grey,

The hills and dells, the common drain, his Simois,

Rat-grey. Mysterious shadows fell

Affrighting him whenever a cloud offended

The sun up in the other world. The rat-hordes,

Moving, were grey dust shifting in grey dust.

Proud history has such sackends. He was taken

At last by some chance robber seeking treasure

Under Troy’s riven roots. Dragged to the surface.

And there he saw Troy like a burial ground

With tumbled walls for tombs, the smooth sward wrinkled

As Time’s last wave had long since passed that way,

The sky, the sea, Mount Ida and the islands,

No sail from edge to edge, the Greeks clean gone.

They stretched him on a rock and wrenched his limbs,

Asking: “Where is the treasure?” till he died.