For Ares, gold-exchanger for the dead,
And balance-holder in the fight o' the spear,
Due-weight from Ilion sends --
What moves the tear on tear --
A charred scrap to the friends:
Filling with well-packed ashes every urn,
For man -- that was -- the sole return.
And they groan -- praising much, the while,
Now this man as experienced in the strife,
Now that, fallen nobly on a slaughtered pile,
Because of -- not his own -- another's wife.
But things there be, one barks,
When no man harks:
A surreptitious grief that's grudge
Against the Atreidai who first sought the judge.
But some there, round the rampart, have
In Ilian earth, each one his grave:
All fair-formed as at birth,
It hid them -- what they have and hold -- the hostile earth.
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