Page:Homer - Iliad, translation Pope, 1909.djvu/410

408 O'er all the corse their scattered locks they throw:

Achilles next, oppressed with mighty woe,

Supporting with his hands the hero's head,

Bends o'er the extended body of the dead.

Patroclus decent on the appointed ground

They place, and heap the sylvan pile around.

But great Achilles stands apart in prayer,

And from his head divides the yellow hair;

Those curling locks which from his youth he vowed,

And sacred grew to Sperchius' honoured flood:

Then, sighing, to the deep his looks he cast,

And rolled his eyes around the watery waste:

"Sperchius! whose waves, in mazy errors lost,

Delightful roll along my native coast!

To whom we vainly vowed, at our return,

These locks to fall, and hecatombs to burn;

Full fifty rams to bleed in sacrifice,

Where to the day thy silver fountains rise,

And where in shade of consecrated bowers

Thy altars stand, perfumed with native flowers!

So vowed my father, but he vowed in vain;

No more Achilles sees his native plain;

In that vain hope these hairs no longer grow,

Patroclus bears them to the shades below."

Thus o'er Patroclus while the hero prayed,

On his cold hand the sacred lock he laid.

Once more afresh the Grecian sorrows flow:

And now the sun had set upon their woe;

But to the king of men thus spoke the chief:

"Enough, Atrides! give the troops relief:

Permit the mourning legions to retire,

And let the chiefs alone attend the pyre;

The pious care be ours, the dead to burn."

He said: the people to their ships return:

While those deputed to inter the slain,

Heap with a rising pyramid the plain,

A hundred foot in length, a hundred wide,

The growing structure spreads on every side;

High on the top the manly corse they lay,

And well-fed sheep and sable oxen slay:

Achilles covered with their fat the dead,

And the piled victims round the body spread;

Then jars of honey and of fragrant oil

Suspends around, low-bending o'er the pile.

Four sprightly coursers, with a deadly groan,

Pour forth their lives, and on the pyre are thrown.

Of nine large dogs, domestic at his board,

Fall two, selected to attend their lord.

Then last of all, and horrible to tell,