Page:Homer - Iliad, translation Pope, 1909.djvu/383

And lifts his billows, and o'erwhelms his shores.
Then thus to Sïmois: "Haste, my brother flood!
And check this mortal that controls a god:
Our bravest heroes else shall quit the fight,
And Ilion tumble from her towery height.
Gall then thy subject streams, and bid them roar;
From all thy fountains swell thy watery store;
With broken rocks and with a load of dead
Charge the black surge, and pour it on his head.
Mark how resistless through the floods he goes,
And boldly bids the warring gods be foes!
But nor that force, nor form divine to sight,
Shall aught avail him, if our rage unite:
Whelmed under our dark gulfs those arms shall lie,
That blaze so dreadful in each Trojan eye;
And deep beneath a sandy mountain hurled,
Immersed remain this terror of the world.
Such ponderous ruin shall confound the place,
No Greeks shall e'er his perished relics grace,
No hand his bones shall gather or inhume;
These his cold rites, and this his watery tomb."
He said; and on the chief descends amain,
Increased with gore, and swelling with the slain.
Then, murmuring from his beds, he boils, he raves,
And a foam whitens on the purple waves:
At every step, before Achilles stood
The crimson surge, and deluged him with blood.
Fear touched the queen of heaven: she saw dismayed,
She called aloud, and summoned Vulcan's aid.
"Rise to the war! the insulting flood requires
Thy wasteful arm: assemble all thy fires!
While to their aid, by our command enjoined,
Rush the swift eastern and the western wind:
These from old ocean at my word shall blow,
Pour the red torrent on the watery foe,
Corses and arms to one bright ruin turn,
And hissing rivers to their bottoms burn.
Go, mighty in thy rage I display thy power;
Drink the whole flood, the crackling trees devour;
Scorch all the banks 1 and, till our voice reclaim,
Exert the unwearied furies of the flame!"
The Power ignipotent her word obeys:
Wide o'er the plain he pours the boundless blaze;
At once consumes the dead, and dries the soil;
And the shrunk waters in their channel boil.
As when autumnal Boreas sweeps the sky,
And instant blows the watered gardens dry:
So looked the field, so whitened was the ground,
While Vulcan breathed the fiery blast around.