Page:Homer - Iliad, translation Pope, 1909.djvu/229

125—173 Asius alone, confiding in his car,

His vaunted coursers urged to meet the war.

Unhappy hero! and advised in vain!

Those wheels returning ne'er shall mark the plain;

No more those coursers with triumphant joy

Restore their master to the gates of Troy!

Black death attends behind the Grecian wall,

And great Idomeneus shall boast thy fall!

Fierce to the left he drives, where from the plain

The flying Grecians strove their ships to gain;

Swift through the wall their horse and chariots past,

The gates half-opened to receive the last.

Thither, exulting in his force, he flies;

His following host with clamours rend the skies:

To plunge the Grecians headlong in the main,

Such their proud hopes, but all their hopes were vain!

To guard the gates two mighty chiefs attend,

Who, from the Lapiths' warlike race descend;

This Polypœtes, great Perithoüs' heir,

And that Leonteus, like the god of war;

As two tall oaks, before the wall they rise;

Their roots in earth, their heads amidst the skies:

Whose spreading arms, with leafy honours crowned,

Forbid the tempest, and protect the ground;

High on the hills appears their stately form,

And their deep roots for ever brave the storm.

So graceful these, and so the shock they stand

Of raging Asius, and his furious band.

Orestes, Acamas, in front appear,

And Œnomaus and Thoön close the rear.

In vain their clamours shake the ambient fields,

In vain around them beat their hollow shields;

The fearless brothers on the Grecians call,

To guard their navies, and defend their wall.

E'en when they saw Troy's sable troops impend,

And Greece tumultuous from her towers descend,

Forth from the portals rushed the intrepid pair,

Opposed their breasts, and stood themselves the war,

So two wild boars spring furious from their den,

Roused with the cries of dogs and voice of men;

On every side the crackling trees they tear,

And root the shrubs, and lay the forest bare;

They gnash their tusks, with fire their eyeballs roll,

Till some wide wound lets out their mighty soul.

Around their heads the whistling javelins sung;

With sounding strokes their brazen targets rung:

Fierce was the fight, while yet the Grecian powers

Maintained the walls, and manned the lofty towers:

To save their fleet, the last efforts they try,