Page:Homer - Iliad, translation Pope, 1909.djvu/305

460—508 High-bounding o'er the fosse : the whirling car

Smokes through the ranks, o'ertakes the flying war,

And thunders after Hector; Hector flies,

Patroclus shakes his lance; but fate denies.

Not with less noise, with less impetuous force,

The tide of Trojans urge their desperate course,

Than when in autumn Jove his fury pours,

And earth is laden with incessant showers;

When guilty mortals break the eternal laws,

Or judges bribed betray the righteous cause;

From their deep beds he bids the rivers rise,

And opens all the floodgates of the skies:

The impetuous torrents from their hills obey,

Whole fields are drowned, and mountains swept away;

Loud roars the deluge till it meets the main,

And trembling man sees all his labours vain.

And now the chief, the foremost troops repelled,

Back to the ships his destined progress held,

Bore down half Troy in his resistless way,

And forced the routed ranks to stand the day.

Between the space where silver Simois flows,

Where lay the fleets, and where the rampires rose,

All grim with dust and blood, Patroclus stands,

And turns the slaughter on the conquering bands.

First Pronoüs died beneath his fiery dart,

Which pierced below the shield his valiant heart.

Thestor was next; who saw the chief appear,

And fell the victim of his coward fear:

Shrunk up he sat, with wild and haggard eye,

Nor stood to combat, nor had force to fly:

Patroclus marked him as he shunned the war,

And with unmanly tremblings shook the car,

And dropped the flowing reins. Him 'twixt the jaws

The javelin sticks, and from the chariot draws.

As on a rock that overhangs the main,

An angler, studious of the line and cane,

Some mighty fish draws panting on the shore;

Not with less ease the barbed javelin bore

The gaping dastard; as the spear was shook,

He fell, and life his heartless breast forsook.

Next on Eryalus he flies; a stone,

Large as a rock, was by his fury thrown:

Full on his crown the ponderous fragment flew,

And burst the helm, and cleft the head in two:

Prone to the ground the breathless warrior fell,

And death involved him with the shades of hell.

Then low in dust Epaltes, Echius, lie;

Ipheas, Evippus, Polymelus, die;

Amphoterus and Erymas succeed;