Page:Homer - Iliad, translation Pope, 1909.djvu/334

What Troy can dare, we have already tried,
Have tried it, and have stood." The hero said:
High from the ground the warriors heave the dead.
A general clamour rises at the sight:
Loud shout the Trojans, and renew the fight;
Not fiercer rush along the gloomy wood,
With rage insatiate, and with thirst of blood,
Voracious hounds, that many a length before
Their furious hunters, drive the wounded boar;
But if the savage turns his glaring eye,
They howl aloof, and round the forest fly.
Thus on retreating Greece the Trojans pour.
Wave their thick faulchions, and their javelins shower:
But, Ajax turning, to their fears they yield,
All pale they tremble, and forsake the field.
⁠While thus aloft the hero's corse they bear,
Behind them rages all the storm of war;
Confusion, tumult, horror, o'er the throng
Of men, steeds, chariots, urged the rout along:
Less fierce the winds with rising flames conspire,
To whelm some city under waves of fire;
Now sink in gloomy clouds the proud abodes;
Now crack the blazing temples of the gods;
The rumbling torrent through the ruin rolls,
And sheets of smoke mount heavy to the poles.
The heroes sweat beneath their honoured load:
As when two mules, along the rugged road,
From the steep mountain with exerted strength
Drag some vast beam, or mast's unwieldy length;
Inly they groan, big drops of sweat distil,
The enormous timber lumbering down the hill;
So these: behind, the bulk of Ajax stands,
And breaks the torrent of the rushing bands.
Thus when a river, swelled with sudden rains,
Spreads his broad waters o'er the level plains,
Some interposing hill the stream divides,
And breaks its force, and turns the winding tides.
Still close they follow, close the rear engage;
Æneas storms, and Hector foams with rage:
While Greece a heavy thick retreat maintains,
Wedged in one body, like a flight of cranes,
That shriek incessant while the falcon, hung
High on poised pinions, threats their callow young.
So from the Trojan chiefs the Grecians fly,
Such the wild terror, and the mingled cry;
Within, without the trench, and all the way,
Strewed in bright heaps, their arms and armour lay;
Such horror Jove impressed I yet still proceeds

The work of death, and still the battle bleeds.