Page:Homer - Iliad, translation Pope, 1909.djvu/207

105—153 But general murmurs told their griefs above,

And each accused the partial will of Jove.

Meanwhile apart, superior, and alone,

The eternal monarch, on his awful throne,

Wrapped in the blaze of boundless glory, sat:

And, fixed, fulfilled the just decrees of fate.

On earth he turned his all-considering eyes,

And marked the spot where Ilion's towers arise;

The sea with ships, the field with armies spread,

The victor's rage, the dying and the dead.

Thus while the morning beams increasing bright

O'er heaven's pure azure spread the glowing light,

Commutual death the fate of war confounds,

Each adverse battle gored with equal wounds.

But now—what time in some sequestered vale

The weary woodman spreads his sparing meal,

When his tired arms refuse the axe to rear,

And claim a respite from the sylvan war;

But not till half the prostrate forests lay

Stretched in long ruin, and exposed to day—

Then, nor till then, the Greeks' impulsive might

Pierced the black phalanx, and let in the light.

Great Agamemnon then the slaughter led,

And slew Bienor at his people's head;

Whose squire Oïleus, with a sudden spring,

Leaped from the chariot to revenge his king,

But in his front he felt the fatal wound,

Which pierced his brain, and stretched him on the ground:

Atrides spoiled, and left them on the plain:

Vain was their youth, their glittering armour vain:

Now soiled with dust, and naked to the sky,

Their snowy limbs and beauteous bodies lie.

Two sons of Priam next to battle move,

The product one of marriage, one of love;

In the same car the brother warriors ride,

This took the charge to combat, that to guide:

Far other task, than when they went to keep,

On Ida's tops, their father's fleecy sheep!

These on the mountains once Achilles found,

And captive led, with pliant osiers bound;

Then to their sire for ample sums restored;

But now to perish by Atrides' sword:

Pierced in the breast the base-born Isus bleeds:

Cleft through the head, his brother's fate succeeds;

Swift to the spoil the hasty victor falls,

And, stripped, their features to his mind recalls.

The Trojans see the youths untimely die,

But helpless tremble for themselves, and fly.

So when a lion, ranging o'er the lawns,