Page:Homer - Iliad, translation Pope, 1909.djvu/213

Now to the skies the foaming billows rears,
Now breaks the surge, and wide the bottom bares:
Thus raging Hector, with resistless hands,
O'erturns, confounds, and scatters all their bands.
Now the last ruin the whole host appals;
Now Greece had trembled in her wooden walls;
But wise Ulysses called Tydides forth,
His soul rekindled, and awaked his worth:
"And stand we deedless, O eternal shame!
Till Hector's arm involve the ships in flame?
Haste, let us join, and combat side by side."
The warrior thus, and thus the friend replied:
"No martial toil I shun, no danger fear;
Let Hector come, I wait his fury here.
But Jove with conquest crowns the Trojan train,
And, Jove our foe, all human force is vain."
He sighed; but, sighing, raised his vengeful steel,
And from his car the proud Thymbræus fell:
Molion, the charioteer, pursued his lord,
His death ennobled by Ulysses' sword.
There slain, they left them in eternal night;
Then plunged amidst the thickest ranks of fight.
So two wild boars outstrip the following hounds,
Then swift revert, and wounds return for wounds.
Stern Hector's conquests in the middle plain
Stood checked awhile, and Greece respired again.
The sons of Merops shone amidst the war;
Towering they rode in one refulgent car;
In deep prophetic arts their father skilled,
Had warned his children from the Trojan field;
Fate urged them on; the father warned in vain,
They rushed to fight, and perished on the plain!
Their breasts no more the vital spirit warms;
The stern Tydides strips their shining arms.
Hypirochus by great Ulysses dies,
And rich Hippodamus becomes his prize.
Great Jove from Ide with slaughter fills his sight,
And level hangs the doubtful scale of fight.
By Tydeus' lance Agastrophus was slain,
The far-famed hero of Pæonian strain;
Winged with his fears, on foot he strove to fly,
His steeds too distant, and the foe too nigh;
Through broken orders, swifter than the wind,
He fled, but, flying, left his life behind.
This Hector sees, as his experienced eyes
Traverse the files, and to the rescue flies;
Shouts, as he passed, the crystal regions rend,
And moving armies on his march attend.
Great Diomed himself was seized with fear,