Page:Homer - Iliad, translation Pope, 1909.djvu/217

From the blind thicket wounds a stately deer;
Down his cleft side while fresh the blood distils,
He bounds aloft, and scuds from hills to hills:
Till, life's warm vapour issuing through the wound,
Wild mountain-wolves the fainting beast surround;
Just as their jaws his prostrate limbs invade,
The lion rushes through the woodland shade;
The wolves, though hungry, scour dispersed away;
The lordly savage vindicates his prey.
Ulysses thus, unconquered by his pains,
A single warrior, half a host sustains:
But soon as Ajax heaves his tower-like shield,
The scattered crowds fly frighted o'er the field:
Atrides' arm the sinking hero stays,
And, saved from numbers, to his car conveys.
Victorious Ajax plies the routed crew,
And first Doryclus, Priam's son, he slew:
On strong Pandocus nexts inflicts a wound,
And lays Lysander bleeding on the ground;
As when a torrent, swelled with wintry rains,
Pours from the mountains o'er the deluged plains,
And pines and oaks, from their foundation torn,
A country's ruins, to the seas are borne:
Fierce Ajax thus o'erwhelms the yielding throng;
Men, steeds, and chariots, roll in heaps along.
But Hector, from this scene of slaughter far,
Raged on the left, and ruled the tide of war:
Loud groans proclaim his progress through the plain,
And deep Scamander swells with heaps of slain.
There Nestor and Idomeneus oppose
The warrior's fury; there the battle glows;
There fierce on foot, or from the chariot's height,
His sword deforms the beauteous ranks of fight.
The spouse of Helen, dealing darts around,
Had pierced Machaon with a distant wound:
In his right shoulder the broad shaft appeared,
And trembling Greece for her physician feared.
To Nestor then Idomeneus begun:
"Glory of Greece, old Neleus' valiant son!
Ascend thy chariot, haste with speed away,
And great Machaon to the ships convey.
A wise physician, skilled our wounds to heal,
Is more than armies to the public weal."
Old Nestor mounts his seat. Beside him rode
The wounded offspring of the healing god.
He lends the lash; the steeds with sounding feet
Shake the dry field, and thunder toward the fleet.
But now Cebriones, from Hector's car,
Surveyed the various fortune of the war.