Page:Homer - Iliad, translation Pope, 1909.djvu/324

With brazen shields in horrid circle stand:
Jove, pouring darkness o'er the mingled fight,
Conceals the warriors' shining helms in night:
To him the chief, for whom the hosts contend,
Had lived not hateful, for he lived a friend:
Dead he protects him with superior care,
Nor dooms his carcass to the birds of air.
The first attack the Grecians scarce sustain,
Repulsed, they yield; the Trojans seize the slain:
Then fierce they rally, to revenge led on
By the fierce rage of Ajax Telamon,
Ajax, to Peleus' son the second name,
In graceful stature next, and next in fame.
With headlong force the foremost ranks he tore:
So through the thicket bursts the mountain boar,
And rudely scatters, far to distance round,
The frighted hunter and the baying hound.
The son of Lethus, brave Pelasgus' heir,
Hippothoüs, dragged the carcass through the war;
The sinewy ancles bored, the feet he bound
With thongs, inserted through the double wound:
Inevitable fate o'ertakes the deed;
Doomed by great Ajax' vengeful lance to bleed
It cleft the helmet's brazen cheeks in twain;
The shattered crest and horsehair strew the plain:
With nerves relaxed he tumbles to the ground,
The brain comes gushing through the ghastly wound.
He drops Patroclus' foot, and, o'er him spread,
Now lies a sad companion of the dead
Far from Larissa lies, his native air,
And ill requites his parent's tender care.
Lamented youth! in life's first bloom he fell,
Sent by great Ajax to the shades of hell.
Once more at Ajax Hector's javelin flies;
The Grecian marking as it cut the skies,
Shunned the descending death, which, hissing on,
Stretched in the dust the great Iphitus' son,
Schedius the brave, of all the Phocian kind
The boldest warrior, and the noblest mind:
In little Panope, for strength renowned,
He held his seat, and ruled the realms around.
Plunged in his throat, the weapon drank his blood,
And, deep transpiercing, through the shoulder stood;
In clanging arms the hero fell, and all
The fields resounded with his weighty fall.
Phorcys, as slain Hippothoüs he defends,
The Telamonian lance his belly rends;
The hollow armour burst before the stroke,
And through the wound the rushing entrails broke.