Page:Homer - Iliad, translation Pope, 1909.djvu/337

70—118 How just a cause has Thetis to complain!

How wretched, were I mortal, were my fate!

How more than wretched in the immortal state!

Sprung from my bed a godlike hero came,

The bravest far that ever bore the name;

Like some fair olive, by my careful hand

He grew, he flourished, and adorned the land.

To Troy I sent him; but the fates ordain

He never, never must return again.

So short a space the light of heaven to view,

So short, alas I and filled with anguish too.

Hear how his sorrows echo through the shore!

I cannot ease them, but I must deplore;

I go at least to bear a tender part,

And mourn my loved one with a mother's heart"

She said, and left the caverns of the main.

All bathed in tears, the melancholy train

Attend her way. Wide-opening part the tides,

While the long pomp the silver wave divides,

Approaching now, they touched the Trojan land;

Then, two by two, ascended up the strand.

The immortal mother, standing close beside

Her mournful offspring, to his sighs replied;

Along the coast their mingled clamours ran,

And thus the silver-footed dame began:

"Why mourns my son? thy late-preferred request

The god has granted, and the Greeks distressed:

Why mourns my son? thy anguish let me share,

Reveal the cause, and trust a parent's care."

He, deeply groaning, "To this cureless grief

Not e'en the Thunderer's favour brings relief.

Patroclus—Ah I say, goddess, can I boast

A pleasure now? Revenge itself is lost;

Patroclus, loved of all my martial train,

Beyond mankind, beyond myself, is slain!

Lost are those arms the gods themselves bestowed

On Peleus; Hector bears the glorious load.

Cursed be that day, when all the Powers above

Thy charms submitted to a mortal love:

Oh hadst thou still, a sister of the main,

Pursued the pleasures of the watery reign;

And happier Peleus, less ambitious, led

A mortal beauty to his equal bed!

Ere the sad fruit of thy unhappy womb

Had caused such sorrows past, and woes to come.

For soon, alas I that wretched offspring slain,

New woes, new sorrows, shall create again.

'Tis not in fate the alternate now to give;

Patroclus dead, Achilles hates to live.