Page:Homer - Iliad, translation Pope, 1909.djvu/185

667—704 Till rage at length inflamed his lofty breast,

For rage invades the wisest and the best.

Cursed by Althæa, to his wrath he yields,

And, in his wife's embrace, forgets the fields.

"She from Marpessa sprung, divinely fair,

And matchless Idas, more than man in war;

The god of day adored the mother's charms:

Against the god the father bent his arms:

The afflicted pair, their sorrows to proclaim,

From Cleopatra changed this daughter's name,

And called Alcyone; a name to shew

The father's grief, the mourning mother's woe.

To her the chief retired from stern debate,

But found no peace from fierce Althæa's hate:

Althæa's hate the unhappy warrior drew,

Whose luckless hand his royal uncle slew;

She beat the ground, and called the powers beneath

On her own son to wreak her brother's death;

Hell heard her curses from the realms profound,

And the red fiends that walked the nightly round;

In vain Ætolia her deliverer waits,

War shakes her walls, and thunders at her gates.

She sent ambassadors, a chosen band,

Priests of the gods, and elders of the land,

Besought the chief to save the sinking state:

Their prayers were urgent, and their proffers great—

Full fifty acres of the richest ground,

Half pasture green, and half with vineyards crowned—

His suppliant father, aged Œneus, came;

His sisters followed: e'en the vengeful dame

Althæa sues; his friends before him fall:

He stands relentless, and rejects them all.

Meanwhile the victors' shouts ascend the skies;

The walls are scaled; the rolling flames arise;

At length his wife, a form divine, appears,

With piercing cries, and supplicating tears;

She paints the horrors of a conquered town,

The heroes slain, the palaces overthrown,