Part 13 (1/2)

My schemes, my labours, and my hopes be vain?

Have I, for this, shook Ilion with alarms, assembled nations, set torlds in arms?

To spread the war, I flew from shore to shore; The ith ripe vengeance o'er their heads impends, But Jove himself the faithless race defends

Loth as thou art to punish lawless lust, Not all the Gods are partial and unjust”

The sire whose thunder shakes the cloudy skies, Sighs fro rancour! oh insatiate hate To Phrygia's h offence has fired the wife of Jove?

Can wretched mortals harm the powers above, That Troy, and Troy's whole race thou wouldst confound, And yon fair structures level with the ground!

Haste, leave the skies, fulfil thy stern desire, Burst all her gates, and wrap her walls in fire!

Let Priam bleed! if yet you thirst for ore: To boundless vengeance the wide reallut the queen of heaven!

So let it be, and Jove his peace enjoy,(126) When heaven no longer hears the name of Troy

But should this aruilt demands their fate; Presuive the vengeance way

For know, of all the nu sun and starry skies, Which Gods have raised, or earth-born men enjoy, None stands so dear to Jove as sacred Troy

No race Than Godlike Priam, or than Priam's race

Still to our nauish'd fire”

At this the Goddess rolled her radiant eyes, Then on the Thunderer fix'd them, and replies: ”Three towns are Juno's on the Grecian plains, More dear than all the extended earth contains, Mycenae, Argos, and the Spartan wall;(127)

These thou eance to remove; The crime's sufficient that they share my love

Of power superior why should I complain?

Resent I may, but ht require, Sprung with thyself from one celestial sire, A Goddess born, to share the real Jove; Nor thou a wife and sister's right deny;(128) Let both consent, and both by terms comply; So shall the Gods our joint decrees obey, And heaven shall act as we direct the way

See ready Pallas waits thy high coian bands; Their sudden friendshi+p by her arts e the peace”

The sire of men and monarch of the sky The advice approved, and bade Minerva fly, Dissolve the league, and all her arts employ To make the breach the faithless act of Troy

Fired with the charge, she headlong urged her flight, And shot like lightning froht

As the red coht the nations with a dire portent, (A fatal sign to ar sailors on the wintryin air, And shakes the sparkles froht Shot the bright Goddess in a trail of light, With eyes erect the gazing hosts ad, and the heavens on fire!

”The Gods (they cried), the Gods this signal sent, And fate now labours with soue, or bloodier scenes prepares; Jove, the great arbiter of peace and wars”

They said, while Pallas through the Trojan throng, (In shape a

Like bold Laodocus, her course she bent, Who froh descent

Amidst the ranks Lycaon's son she found, The warlike Pandarus, for strength renown'd; Whose squadrons, led fro shi+elds in ian! canst thou hear A well-ti ear?

What praise were thine, couldst thou direct thy dart, Aifts froain, Thy country's foe, the Grecian glory slain?

Then seize the occasion, dare the hty deed, Aim at his breast, and may that aim succeed!

But first, to speed the shaft, address thy vow To Lycian Phoebus with the silver bow, And swear the firstlings of thy flock to pay, On Zelia's altars, to the God of day”(131)

He heard, and madly at the motion pleased, His polish'd boith hasty rashness seized

'Twas foroat resign'd the shi+ning spoil

Who pierced long since beneath his arrows bled; The stately quarry on the cliffs lay dead, And sixteen pale honours spread: The workold each taper point adorns

This, by the Greeks unseen, the warrior bends, Screen'd by the shi+elds of his surrounding friends: Therelow, Fits the sharp arrow to the well-strung bow

One from a hundred feather'd deaths he chose, Fated to wound, and cause of future woes; Then offers voith hecatombs to crown Apollo's altars in his native town

Noith full force the yielding horn he bends, Drawn to an arch, and joins the doubling ends; Close to his breast he strains the nerve below, Till the barb'd points approach the circling bow; The ih horn, and twangs the quivering string

But thee, Atrides! in that dangerous hour The Gods forget not, nor thy guardian power, Pallas assists, and (weakened in its force) Diverts the weapon from its destined course: So from her babe, when slumber seals his eye, The watchful mother wafts the envenoolden buckles join'd, Where linen folds the double corslet lined, She turn'd the shaft, which, hissing froh the corslet drove; The folds it pierced, the plaited linen tore, And razed the skin, and drew the purple gore

As when sorace asteed, A nymph in Caria or Maeonia bred, Stains the pure ivory with a lively red; With equal lustre various colours vie, The shi+ning whiteness, and the Tyrian dye: So great Atrides! show'd thy sacred blood, As down thy snowy thigh distill'd the strea oftide: Nor less the Spartan fear'd, before he found The shi+ning barb appear above the wound, Then, with a sigh, that heaved his rief express'd, And grasp'd his hand; while all the Greeks around With answering sighs return'd the plaintive sound