Lovely, Glenn. I’ve always had a soft spot for the Trojans, so I expected to like this and was not disappointed. You’ve condensed the original, but done it well, I think, and the rhymed pentameter couplets—a sort of English alexandrine—seem suitably dignified for the subject.
A few thoughts:
I think you probably need a colon at the end of L2 to introduce the indirect speech that follows.
It may be another of my perverse misreadings, but I understood “or hide what will befall” to mean that a disaster would befall the city and the horse would somehow hide that.
How about “hefty” in place of “enormous”? “Enormous” sounds almost like he’s hurling a log.
Even though the shaft stuck, “bringing forth a groan” gave me the impression that someone inside had been struck, and I wondered why that didn’t give the game away. The original, by specifying what groaned—“the empty, hollow places”—is clearer.
How about: “Had the gods’ adverse decree been overthrown.”
Is the horse ever referred to as “sacred”? Or are you assuming that if it could be polluted, it must be sacred? Would you consider another word like “secret”?
The last line would be metrically more pleasing to me as: “and you, Troy, Priam’s high fort, would now stand fair.”
“Fort” hardly does justice to the topless towers of Ilium, but what else will fit a one-syllable slot other than “town”?
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