Seest thou not me, whom Nature's gifts adorn,
Sprung from a hero, from a goddess born?
The day shall come, which nothing can avert,
When by the spear, the arrow, or the dart,
By night, or day, by force or by design,
Impending death and certain fate are mine.
Die, then!" he said, and as the word he spoke,
The fainting stripling sunk before the stroke;
His hand forgot its grasp, and left the spear;
While all his trembling frame confessed his fear.
Sudden Achilles his broad sword displayed,
And buried in his neck the reeking blade.
Prone fell the youth; and, panting on the land,
The gushing purple dyed the thirsty sand:
The victor to the stream the carcass gave,
And thus insults him, floating on the wave:
"Lie there, Lycaon, let the fish surround
Thy bloated corse, and suck thy gory wound:
There no sad mother shall thy funerals weep,
But swift Scamander roll thee to the deep,
Whose every wave some watery monster brings,
To feast unpunished on the fat of kings.
So perish Troy, and all the Trojan line!
Such ruin theirs, and such compassion mine.
What boots ye now Scamander's worshipped stream,
His earthly honours, and immortal name?
In vain your immolated bulls are slain,
Your living coursers glut his gulfs in vain:
Thus he rewards you with this bitter fate;
Thus, till the Grecian vengeance is complete,
Thus is atoned Patroclus' honoured shade,
And the short absence of Achilles paid."
These boastful words provoke the raging god;
With fury swells the violated flood.
What means divine may yet the power employ,
To check Achilles, and to rescue Troy?
Meanwhile the hero springs in arms, to dare
The great Asteropeus to mortal war;
The son of Pelagon, whose lofty line
Flows from the source of Axius,[1] stream divine
Fair Peribcea's love the god had crowned,
With all his refluent waters circled round.
On him Achilles rushed: he fearless stood,
And shook two spears, advancing from the flood:
The flood impelled him, on Pelides' head
To avenge his waters choked with heaps of dead.
Near as they drew, Achilles thus began:
- ↑ A river of Macedonia.
