Page:Homer - Iliad, translation Pope, 1909.djvu/337

How just a cause has Thetis to complain!
How wretched, were I mortal, were my fate!
How more than wretched in the immortal state!
Sprung from my bed a godlike hero came,
The bravest far that ever bore the name;
Like some fair olive, by my careful hand
He grew, he flourished, and adorned the land.
To Troy I sent him; but the fates ordain
He never, never must return again.
So short a space the light of heaven to view,
So short, alas I and filled with anguish too.
Hear how his sorrows echo through the shore!
I cannot ease them, but I must deplore;
I go at least to bear a tender part,
And mourn my loved one with a mother's heart"
⁠She said, and left the caverns of the main.
All bathed in tears, the melancholy train
Attend her way. Wide-opening part the tides,
While the long pomp the silver wave divides,
Approaching now, they touched the Trojan land;
Then, two by two, ascended up the strand.
The immortal mother, standing close beside
Her mournful offspring, to his sighs replied;
Along the coast their mingled clamours ran,
And thus the silver-footed dame began:
⁠"Why mourns my son? thy late-preferred request
The god has granted, and the Greeks distressed:
Why mourns my son? thy anguish let me share,
Reveal the cause, and trust a parent's care."
⁠He, deeply groaning, "To this cureless grief
Not e'en the Thunderer's favour brings relief.
Patroclus—Ah I say, goddess, can I boast
A pleasure now? Revenge itself is lost;
Patroclus, loved of all my martial train,
Beyond mankind, beyond myself, is slain!
Lost are those arms the gods themselves bestowed
On Peleus; Hector bears the glorious load.
Cursed be that day, when all the Powers above
Thy charms submitted to a mortal love:
Oh hadst thou still, a sister of the main,
Pursued the pleasures of the watery reign;
And happier Peleus, less ambitious, led
A mortal beauty to his equal bed!
Ere the sad fruit of thy unhappy womb
Had caused such sorrows past, and woes to come.
For soon, alas I that wretched offspring slain,
New woes, new sorrows, shall create again.
'Tis not in fate the alternate now to give;

Patroclus dead, Achilles hates to live.