Page:Homer - Iliad, translation Pope, 1909.djvu/291

Bursts as a wave that from the cloud impends,
And swelled with tempests on the ship descends;
White are the decks with foam; the winds aloud
Howl o'er the masts, and sing through every shroud:
Pale, trembling, tired, the sailors freeze with fears;
And instant death on every wave appears.
So pale the Greeks the eyes of Hector meet,
The chief so thunders, and so shakes the fleet.
As when a lion rushing from his den,
Amidst the plain of some wide-watered fen,
Where numerous oxen, as at ease they feed,
At large expatiate o'er the ranker mead,
Leaps on the herds before the herdsman's eyes;
The trembling herdsman far to distance flies:
Some lordly bull, the rest dispersed and fled,
He singles out, arrests, and lays him dead:
Thus from the rage of Jove-like Hector flew
All Greece in heaps; but one he seized, and slew,
Mycenean Periphes, a mighty name,
In wisdom great, in arms well known to fame:
The minister of stern Eurystheus' ire
Against Alcides, Gopreus was his sire:
The son redeemed the honours of the race,
A son as generous as the sire was base;
O'er all his country's youth conspicuous far
In every virtue, or of peace or war:
But doomed to Hector's stronger force to yield!
Against the margin of his ample shield
He struck his hasty foot: his heels upstrung;
Supine he fell, his brazen helmet rung.
On the fallen chief the invading Trojan pressed,
And plunged the pointed javelin in his breast.
His circling friends, who strove to guard too late
The unhappy hero, fled, or shared his fate.
Chased from the foremost line, the Grecian train
Now man the next, receding toward the main:
Wedged in one body at the tents they stand,
Walled round with sterns, a gloomy, desperate band.
Now manly shame forbids the inglorious flight;
Now fear itself confines them to the fight:
Man courage breathes in man; but Nestor most,
The sage preserver of the Grecian host,
Exhorts, adjures, to guard these utmost shores;
And by their parents, by themselves, implores:
"O friends! be men; your generous breasts inflame
With mutual honour, and with mutual shame!
Think of your hopes, your fortunes; all the care
Your wives, your infants, and your parents share:
Think of each living father's reverend head;