Page:Homer - Iliad, translation Pope, 1909.djvu/143

With silent joy the settling hosts survey:
In form of vultures, on the beech's height
They sit concealed, and wait the future fight.
The thronging troops obscure the dusky fields,
Horrid with bristling spears, and gleaming shields.
As when a general darkness veils the main,
Soft Zephyr curling the wide watery plain,
The waves scarce heave, the face of ocean sleeps,
And a still horror saddens all the deeps:
Thus in thick orders settling wide around,
At length composed they sit, and shade the ground.
Great Hector first amidst both armies broke
The solemn silence, and their powers bespoke:
"Hear, all ye Trojan, all ye Grecian bands,
What my soul prompts, and what some god commands.
Great Jove, averse our warfare to compose,
O'erwhelms the nations with new toils and woes;
War with a fiercer tide once more returns,
Till Ilion falls, or till yon navy burns.
You then, O princes of the Greeks, appear;
'Tis Hector speaks, and calls the gods to hear:
From all your troops select the boldest knight,
And him, the boldest, Hector dares to fight.
Here if I fall, by chance of battle slain,
Be his my spoil, and his these arms remain;
But let my body, to my friends returned,
By Trojan hands, and Trojan flames be burned.
And if Apollo, in whose aid I trust,
Shall stretch your daring champion in the dust;
If mine the glory to despoil the foe,
On Phœbus' temple I'll his arms bestow;
The breathless carcass to your navy sent,
Greece on the shore shall raise a monument;
Which when some future mariner surveys,
Washed by broad Hellespont's resounding seas,
Thus shall he say, A valiant Greek lies there,
By Hector slain, the mighty man of war.
The stone shall tell your vanquished hero's name,
And distant ages learn the victor's fame."
This fierce defiance Greece astonished heard,
Blushed to refuse, and to accept it feared.
Stern Menelaüs first the silence broke,
And, inly groaning, thus opprobrious spoke:
"Women of Greece! oh, scandal of your race,
Whose coward souls your manly forms disgrace,
How great the shame, when every age shall know
That not a Grecian met this noble foe.
Go then, resolve to earth from whence ye grew,
A heartless, spiritless, inglorious crew!