Page:Homer - Iliad, translation Pope, 1909.djvu/362



round Pelides, breathing war and blood,

Greece sheathed in arms, beside her vessels stood;

While, near impending from a neighbouring height,

Troy's black battalions wait the shock of fight.

Then Jove to Themis gives command, to call

The gods to council in the starry hall:

Swift o'er Olympus' hundred hills she flies,

And summons all the senate of the skies.

These, shining on, in long procession come

To Jove's eternal adamantine dome.

Not one was absent, not a rural power

That haunts the verdant gloom, or rosy bower;

Each fair-haired dryad of the shady wood,

Each azure sister of the silver flood;

All but old Ocean, hoary sire I who keeps

His ancient seat beneath the sacred deeps.

On marble thrones with lucid columns crowned,

The work of Vulcan, sat the powers around;

E'en he, whose trident sways the watery reign,

Heard the loud summons, and forsook the main,

Assumed his throne amid the bright abodes,

And questioned thus the sire of men and gods:

"What moves the god who heaven and earth commands,

And grasps the thunder in his awful hands,

Thus to convene the whole ethereal state?

Is Greece and Troy the subject in debate?

Already met, the lowering hosts appear,

And death stands ardent on the edge of war."

"'Tis true," the cloud-compelling Power replies,