Page:Homer - Iliad, translation Pope, 1909.djvu/307

Assents to fate, and ratifies the doom.
Then, touched with grief, the weeping heavens distilled
A shower of blood o'er all the fatal field;
The god, his eyes averting from the plain,
Laments his son, predestined to be slain,
Far from the Lycian shores, his happy native reign.
Now met in arms, the combatants appear,
Each heaved the shield, and poised the lifted spear;
From strong Patroclus' hand the javelin fled,
And passed the groin of valiant Thrasymed;
The nerves unbraced no more his bulk sustain;
He falls, and falling bites the bloody plain.
Two sounding darts the Lycian leader threw;
The first aloof with erring fury flew,
The next transpierced Achilles' mortal steed,
The generous Pedasus, of Theban breed,
Fixed in the shoulder-joint; he reeled around,
Rolled in the bloody dust, and pawed the slippery ground.
His sudden fall the entangled harness broke;
Each axle crackled, and the chariot shook:
When bold Automedon, to disengage
The starting coursers, and restrain their rage,
Divides the traces with his sword, and freed
The encumbered chariot from the dying steed:
The rest move on, obedient to the rein;
The car rolls slowly o'er the dusty plain.
The towering chiefs to fiercer fight advance,
And first Sarpedon whirled his mighty lance,
Which o'er the warrior's shoulder took its course,
And spent in empty air its dying force.
Not so Patroclus' never-erring dart;
Aimed at his breast, it pierced the mortal part,
Where the strong fibres bind the solid heart.
Then, as the mountain oak, or poplar tall,
Or pine, fit mast for some great admiral,
Nods to the axe, till with a groaning sound
It sinks, and spreads its honours on the ground;
Thus fell the king; and, laid on earth supine,
Before his chariot stretched his form divine:
He grasped the dust distained with streaming gore,
And, pale in death, lay groaning on the shore.
So lies a bull beneath the lion's paws,
While the grim savage grinds with foaming jaws
The trembling limbs, and sucks the smoking blood;
Deep groans, and hollow roars, rebellow through the wood.
Then to the leader of the Lycian band
The dying chief addressed his last command:
"Glaucus, be bold; thy task be first to dare
The glorious dangers of destructive war,