Things never heard, some mingle truth with lies; The troubled air with empty sounds they beat, Intent to hear, and eager to repeat; Error sits brooding there, with added train Of vain credulity, and joys as vain: Suspicion, with sedition join’d, are near, And rumours raised, and murmurs mix’d, and panic fear. Fame sits aloft, and sees the subject ground, And seas about, and skies above; inquiring all around.

The goddess gives the alarm, and soon is known The Grecian fleet descending on the town. Fix’d on defence, the Trojans are not slow To guard their shore from an expected foe. They meet in fight. By Hector’s fatal hand Protesilaus falls, and bites the strand; Which with expense of blood the Grecians won, And proved the strength unknown of Priam’s son: And to their cost the Trojan leaders felt The Grecian heroes, and what deaths they dealt.