Page:Homer - Iliad, translation Pope, 1909.djvu/408

The rage of hunger and of thirst allay,
Then ease in sleep the labours of the day.
But great Pelides, stretched along the shore,
Where dashed on rocks the broken billows roar,
Lies inly groaning ; while on either hand
The martial Myrmidons confusedly stand:
Along the grass his languid members fall,
Tired with his chase around the Trojan wall;
Hushed by the murmurs of the rolling deep,
At length he sinks in the soft arms of sleep.
When lo I the shade before his closing eyes
Of sad Patroclus rose, or seemed to rise:
In the same robe he living wore, he came,
In stature, voice, and pleasing look, the same.
The form familiar hovered o'er his head,
And, "Sleeps Achilles," thus the phantom said,
"Sleeps my Achilles, his Patroclus dead?
Living, I seemed his dearest, tenderest care,
But now forgot, I wander in the air:
Let my pale corse the rites of burial know,
And give me entrance in the realms below;
Till then, the spirit finds no resting-place,
But here and there the unbodied spectres chase
The vagrant dead around the dark abode,
Forbid to cross the irremeable flood.
Now give thy hand; for to the farther shore
When once we pass, the soul returns no more.
When once the last funereal flames ascend,
No more shall meet Achilles and his friend;
No more our thoughts to those we love make known,
Or quit the dearest to converse alone.
Me fate has severed from the sons of earth,
The fate foredoomed that waited from my birth:
Thee too it waits; before the Trojan wall
E'en great and godlike thou art doomed to fall.
Hear, then; and as in fate and love we join,
Ah, suffer that my bones may rest with thine!
Together have we lived, together bred,
One house received us, and one table fed:
That golden urn thy goddess-mother gave,
May mix our ashes in one common grave."
"And is it thou?" he answers, "to my sight
Once more return'st thou from the realms of night?
Oh more than brother! think each office paid,
Whate'er can rest a discontented shade;
But grant one last embrace, unhappy boy!
Afford at least that melancholy joy."
He said, and with his longing arms essayed
In vain to grasp the visionary shade;