Page:Homer - Iliad, translation Pope, 1909.djvu/431

Brave though he be, yet by no reason awed,
He violates the laws of man and God!"
"If equal honours by the partial skies
Are doomed both heroes," Juno thus replies,
"If Thetis' son must no distinction know,
Then hear, ye gods I the patron of the bow.
But Hector only boasts a mortal claim,
His birth deriving from a mortal dame:
Achilles of your own ethereal race
Springs from a goddess, by a man's embrace:
A goddess by ourself to Peleus given,
A man divine, and chosen friend of heaven:
To grace those nuptials, from the bright abode
Yourselves were present; where this minstrel-god,
Well-pleased to share the feast, amid the quire
Stood proud to hymn, and tune his youthful lyre."
Then thus the Thunderer checks the imperial dame:
"Let not thy wrath the court of heaven inflame;
Their merits, nor their honours, are the same.
But mine, and every god's peculiar grace
Hector deserves, of all the Trojan race:
Still on our shrines his grateful offerings lay,
The only honours men to gods can pay,
Nor ever from our smoking altar ceased
The pure libation, and the holy feast.
Howe'er, by stealth to snatch the corse away,
We will not: Thetis guards it night and day.
But haste, and summon to our courts above
The azure queen: let her persuasion move
Her furious son from Priam to receive
The proffered ransom, and the corse to leave."
He added not: and Iris from the skies,
Swift as a whirlwind, on the message flies;
Meteorous the face of ocean sweeps,
Refulgent gliding o'er the sable deeps.
Between where Samos wide his forests spreads,
And rocky Imbrus lifts its pointed heads,
Down plunged the Maid; the parted waves resound;
She plunged, and instant shot the dark profound.
As, bearing death in the fallacious bait,
From the bent angle sinks the leaden weight;
So passed the goddess through the closing wave,
Where Thetis sorrowed in her secret cave:
There placed amidst her melancholy train,
The blue-haired sisters of the sacred main,
Pensive she sat, revolving fates to come,
And wept her godlike son's approaching doom.
Then thus the goddess of the painted bow
"Arise, O Thetis! from thy seats below;