When thou and Paris met upon the plain,

And all the host sat down to watch you twain

Do battle, which should have me. For my part,

They took me forth to watch; as in the mart

A heifer feels the giver of the feast

Pinch in her flank, and hears the chaffer twist

This way and that for so much fat or lean—

Even so was I, a queen, child of a queen."

She bit her lip until the blood ran free,

And in her eyes he markt deep injury

Scald as the salt tears welled; but "Listen yet,"

She said: "Ye fought, and Paris fell beset

Under thy spurning heel, yet felt no whit

The bitterness as I must come to it;

For she, his Goddess, hid him up in mists

And brought him beat and broken from the lists

Here to his chamber. But I stood and burned,

[43]

Shameful to be by one lost, by one earned,

A prize for games, a slave, a bandied thing—

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