Page:Homer - Iliad, translation Pope, 1909.djvu/122

120 Say, mighty father! shall we scourge his pride,

And drive from fight the impetuous homicide?"

To whom assenting, thus the Thunderer said:

"Go! and the great Minerva be thy aid.

To tame the monster-god Minerva knows,

And oft afflicts his brutal breast with woes."

He said: Saturnia, ardent to obey,

Lashed her white steeds along the aerial way.

Swift down the steep of heaven the chariot rolls,

Between the expanded earth and starry poles.

Far as a shepherd from some point on high,

O'er the wide main extends his boundless eye;

Through such a space of air, with thundering sound,

At every leap the immortal coursers bound.

Troy now they reached, and touched those banks divine

Where silver Simoïs and Scamander join.

There Juno stopped, and, her fair steeds unloosed,

Of air condensed a vapour circumfused:

For these, impregnate with celestial dew,

On Simoïs' brink ambrosial herbage grew.

Thence to relieve the fainting Argive throng,

Smooth as the sailing doves, they glide along.

The best and bravest of the Grecian band,

A warlike circle, round Tydides stand:

Such was their look as lions bathed in blood,

Or foaming boars, the terror of the wood.

Heaven's empress mingles with the mortal crowd,

And shouts, in Stentor's sounding voice, aloud:

Stentor the strong, endued with brazen lungs,

Whose throat surpassed the force of fifty tongues:

"Inglorious Argives! to your race a shame,

And only men in figure and in name!

Once from the walls your timorous foes engaged,

While fierce in war divine Achilles raged;

Now, issuing fearless, they possess the plain,

Now win the shores, and scarce the seas remain."

Her speech new fury to their hearts conveyed;

While near Tydides stood the Athenian Maid:

The king beside his panting steeds she found,

O'erspent with toil, reposing on the ground:

To cool his glowing wound he sat apart,

The wound inflicted by the Lycian dart;

Large drops of sweat from all his limbs descend,

Beneath his ponderous shield his sinews bend,

Whose ample belt, that o'er his shoulder lay,

He eased; and washed the clotted gore away.

The goddess, leaning o'er the bending yoke

Beside his coursers, thus her silence broke:

"Degenerate prince! and not of Tydeus' kind: