Page:Homer - Iliad, translation Pope, 1909.djvu/367

222—270 Or, in reward of thy victorious hand,

Has Troy proposed some spacious tract of land?

An ample forest, or a fair domain,

Of hills for vines, and arable for grain?

E'en this, perhaps, will hardly prove thy lot.

But can Achilles be so soon forgot?

Once, as I think, you saw this brandished spear,

And then the great Æneas seemed to fear.

With hearty haste from Ida's mount he fled,

Nor, till he reached Lyrnessus, turned his head.

Her lofty walls not long our progress stayed;

Those, Pallas, Jove, and we, in ruins laid:

In Grecian chains her captive race were cast;

'Tis true, the great Æneas fled too fast.

Defrauded of my conquest once before,

What then I lost, the gods this day restore.

Go; while thou may'st, avoid the threatened fate;

Fools stay to feel it, and are wise too late."

To this Anchises' son: "Such words employ

To one that fears thee, some unwarlike boy;

Such we disdain; the best may be defied

With mean reproaches and unmanly pride:

Unworthy the high race from which we came,

Proclaimed so loudly by the voice of fame;

Each from illustrious fathers draws his line;

Each goddess-born; half human, half divine.

Thetis' this day, or Venus' offspring dies,

And tears shall trickle from celestial eyes:

For when two heroes, thus derived, contend,

'Tis not in words the glorious strife can end.

If yet thou farther seek to learn my birth,

A tale resounded through the spacious earth,

Hear how the glorious origin we prove

From ancient Dardanus, the first from Jove:

Dardania's walls he raised; for Dion then,

The city since of many-languaged men,

Was not. The natives were content to till

The shady foot of Ida's fountful hill.

From Dardanus, great Erichthonius springs,

The richest once of Asia's wealthy kings;

Three thousand mares his spacious pastures bred,

Three thousand foals beside their mothers fed.

Boreas, enamoured of the sprightly train,

Concealed his godhead in a flowing mane,

With voice dissembled to his loves he neighed,

And coursed the dappled beauties o'er the mead:

Hence sprung twelve others of unrivalled kind,

Swift as their mother mares and father wind.

These lightly skimming, when they swept the plain,