Page:Homer - Iliad, translation Pope, 1909.djvu/376

Repeated wounds the reddening river dyed,
And the warm purple circled on the tide.
Swift through the foamy flood the Trojans fly,
And close in rocks or winding caverns lie:
So the huge dolphin tempesting the main,
In shoals before him fly the scaly train;
Confusedly heaped, they seek their inmost caves,
Or pant and heave beneath the floating waves.
Now, tired with slaughter, from the Trojan band
Twelve chosen youths he drags alive to land;
With their rich belts their captive arms constrains,
Late their proud ornaments, but now their chains;
These his attendants to the ships conveyed,
Sad victims I destined to Patroclus' shade.
Then, as once more he plunged amid the flood,
The young Lycaon in his passage stood;
The son of Priam, whom the hero's hand
But late made captive in his father's land,
As from a sycamore his sounding steel
Lopped the green arms to spoke a chariot wheel;
To Lemnos' isle he sold the royal slave,
Where Jason's son the price demanded gave:
But kind Eetion, touching on the shore,
The ransomed prince to fair Arisbe bore.
Ten days were past, since in his father's reign
He felt the sweets of liberty again:
The next, that god whom men in vain withstand,
Gives the same youth to the same conquering hand:
Now never to return! and doomed to go
A sadder journey to the shades below.
His well-known face when great Achilles eyed
The helm and visor he had cast aside
With wild affright, and dropped upon the field
His useless lance and unavailing shield
As trembling, panting, from the stream he fled,
And knocked his faltering knees, the hero said:
"Ye mighty gods! what wonders strike my view!
Is it in vain our conquering arms subdue?
Sure I shall see yon heaps of Trojans killed,
Rise from the shade, and brave me on the field: no:
As now the captive, whom so late I bound
And. sold to Lemnos, stalks on Trojan ground!
Not him the sea's unmeasured deeps detain,
That bar such numbers from their native plain:
Lo! he returns. Try then my flying spear!
Try, if the grave can hold the wanderer:
If earth at length this active prince can seize,
Earth, whose strong grasp has held down Hercules."
Thus while he spake, the Trojan, pale with fears,