Page:Homer - Iliad, translation Pope, 1909.djvu/332

To Atreus' seed, the godlike Telamon:
"Alas! who sees not Jove's almighty hand
Transfers the glory to the Trojan band?
Whether the weak or strong discharge the dart,
He guides each arrow to a Grecian heart:
Not so our spears: incessant though they rain,
He suffers every lance to fall in vain.
Deserted of the god, yet let us try
What human strength and prudence can supply;
If yet this honoured corse, in triumph borne,
May glad the fleets that hope not our return,
Who tremble yet, scarce rescued from their fates,
And still hear Hector thundering at their gates.
Some hero too must be despatched to bear
The mournful message to Pelides' ear;
For sure he knows not, distant on the shore,
His friend, his loved Patroclus, is no more.
But such a chief I spy not through the host:
The men, the steeds, the armies, all are lost
In general darkness : Lord of earth and air!
O king! O father! hear my humble prayer:
Dispel this cloud, the light of heaven restore;
Give me to see, and Ajax asks no more:
If Greece must perish, we thy will obey,
But let us perish in the face of day!"
With tears the hero spoke, and at his prayer
The god relenting cleared the clouded air;
Forth burst the sun with all-enlightening ray;
The blaze of armour flashed against the day.
"Now, now, Atrides, cast around thy sight,
If yet Antilochus survives the fight,
Let him to great Achilles' ear convey
The fatal news." Atrides hastes away.
So turns the lion from the nightly fold,
Though high in courage, and with hunger bold,
Long galled with herdsmen, and long vexed by hounds,
Stiff with fatigue, and fretted sore with wounds;
The darts fly round him from a hundred hands,
And the red terrors of the blazing brands:
Till late, reluctant, at the dawn of day
Sour he departs, and quits the untasted prey.
So moved Atrides from his dangerous place,
With weary limbs, but with unwilling pace;
The foe, he feared, might yet Patroclus gain,
And much admonished, much adjured his train:
"Oh, guard these relics to your charge consigned,
And bear the merits of the dead in mind;
How skilled he was in each obliging art;
The mildest manners, and the gentlest heart: