Page:Homer - Iliad, translation Pope, 1909.djvu/311

754—802 Vain are thy vaunts; success is still from heaven:

This instant sends thee down to Pluto's coast:

Mine is the glory, his thy parting ghost."

"O friend!" Mencetius' son this answer gave,

"With words to combat ill befits the brave:

Not empty boasts the sons of Troy repel,

Your swords must plunge them to the shades of hell.

To speak, beseems the council: but to dare

In glorious action, is the task of war."

This said, Patroclus to the battle flies;

Great Merion follows, and new shouts arise:

Shields, helmets rattle, as the warriors close,

And thick and heavy sounds the storm of blows.

As through the shrilling vale, or mountain ground,

The labours of the woodman's axe resound;

Blows following blows are heard re-echoing wide,

While crackling forests fall on every side:

Thus echoed all the fields with loud alarms,

So fell the warriors, and so rung their arms.

Now great Sarpedon on the sandy shore,

His heavenly form defaced with dust and gore,

And stuck with darts by warring heroes shed,

Lies undistinguished from the vulgar dead.

His long-disputed corse the chiefs enclose,

On every side the busy combat grows;

Thick as beneath some shepherd's thatched abode,

The pails high foaming with a milky flood,

The buzzing flies, a persevering train,

Incessant swarm, and chased return again.

Jove viewed the combat with a stern survey,

And eyes that flashed intolerable day;

Fixed on the field his sight, his breast debates

The vengeance due, and meditates the fates:

Whether to urge their prompt effect, and call

The force of Hector to Patroclus' fall,

This instant see his short-lived trophies won,

And stretch him breathless on his slaughtered son;

Or yet, with many a soul's untimely flight,

Augment the fame and horror of the fight.

To crown Achilles' valiant friend with praise

At length he dooms, and that his last of days

Shall set in glory; bids him drive the foe;

Nor unattended see the shades below.

Then Hector's mind he fills with dire dismay;

He mounts his car, and calls his hosts away;

Sunk with Troy's heavy fates, he sees decline

The scales of Jove, and pants with awe divine.

Then, nor before, the hardy Lycians fled,

And left their monarch with the common dead: