Page:The poems of Gaius Valerius Catullus - Francis Warre Cornish.djvu/119



' Against him not a hero shall match himself in ' war, when the Phrygian streams shall flow with ' Teucrian blood, and the Trojan walls, with tedious 'war beleaguering, the third heir of Pelops shall ' lay waste. Run, drawing the woof-threads, ye ' spindles, run.

' The hero's surpassing achievements and re- ' nowned deeds often shall mothers own at the ' burial of their sons, loosing dishevelled hair from 35° ' hoary head, and marring their withered breasts with ' weak hands. Run, drawing the woof-threads, ye 'spindles, run.

' For as the husbandman cropping the thick ears ' of corn under the burning sun mows down the ' yellow fields, so shall he lay low with foeman's ' steel the bodies of the sons of Troy. Run, drawing ' the woof-threads, ye spindles, run.

' Witness of his great deeds of valour shall be ' the wave of Scamander which pours itself forth ' abroad in the current of Hellespont, whose channel 'with heaps of slain corpses he shall choke, and make ' the deep streams warm with mingled blood. Run, ' drawing the woof-threads, ye spindles, run.

' Lastly, witness too shall be the prize assigned ' to him in death, when the rounded barrow heaped ' up with lofty mound shall receive the snowy limbs ' of the slaughtered maiden. Run, drawing the woof- ' threads, ye spindles, run.

' For so soon as fortune shall give to the weary ' Achaeans power to loose the Neptune-forged circlet ' of the Dardanian town, the high tomb shall be 'wetted with Polyxena's blood, who like a victim ' falling under the two-edged steel, shall bend her