Page:Homer - Iliad, translation Pope, 1909.djvu/357

268—316 All-good, all-wise, and all-surveying Jove!

And mother earth, and heaven's revolving light,

And ye, fell furies of the realms of night,

Who rule the dead, and horrid woes prepare

For perjured kings, and all who falsely swear!

The black-eyed maid inviolate removes,

Pure and unconscious of my manly loves.

If this be false, heaven all its vengeance shed,

And levelled thunder strike my guilty head!"

With that, his weapon deep inflicts the wound:

The bleeding savage tumbles to the ground:

The sacred herald rolls the victim slain,

A feast for fish, into the foaming main.

Then thus Achilles: "Hear, ye Greeks I and know,

Whatever we feel, 'tis Jove inflicts the woe:

Not else Atrides could our rage inflame,

Nor from my arms, unwilling, force the dame.

'Twas Jove's high will alone, o'er-ruling all,

That doomed our strife, and doomed the Greeks to fall.

Go then, ye chiefs, indulge the genial rite;

Achilles waits you, and expects the fight."

The speedy council at his word adjourned;

To their black vessels all the Greeks returned:

Achilles sought his tent. His train before

Marched onward, bending with the gifts they bore.

Those in the tents the squires industrious spread;

The foaming coursers to the stalls they led.

To their new seats the female captives move:

Brisei's, radiant as the queen of love,

Slow as she passed, beheld with sad survey

Where, gashed with cruel wounds, Patroclus lay.

Prone on the body fell the heavenly fair,

Beat her sad breast, and tore her golden hair;

All-beautiful in grief, her humid eyes,

Shining with tears, she lifts, and thus she cries:

"Ah youth! for ever dear, for ever kind,

Once tender friend of my distracted mind I

I left thee fresh in life, in beauty gay;

Now find thee cold, inanimated clay!

What woes my wretched race of life attend!

Sorrows on sorrows, never doomed to end!

The first loved consort of my virgin bed

Before these eyes in fatal battle bled;

My three brave brothers in one mournful day

All trod the dark irremeable way:

Thy friendly arm upreared me from the plain,

And dried my sorrows for a husband slain;

Achilles' care you promised I should prove,

The first, the dearest partner of his love;