No More Learning

Amidst the carnage, desperate as they stand,
Thus Agelaus roused the lagging band:

"The hour has come, when yon fierce man no more
With bleeding princes shall bestrew the floor;
Lo! Mentor leaves him with an empty boast;
The four remain, but four against an host.
Let each at once discharge the deadly dart,
One sure of six shall reach Ulysses' heart:
The rest must perish, their great leader slain:
Thus shall one stroke the glory lost regain. "

Then all at once their mingled lances threw,
And thirsty all of one man's blood they flew;
In vain! Minerva turned them with her breath,
And scattered short, or wide, the points of death!
With deaden'd sound one on the threshold falls,
One strikes the gate, one rings against the walls:
The storm passed innocent. The godlike man
Now loftier trod, and dreadful thus began:
"'Tis now (brave friends) our turn, at once to throw,
(So speed them Heaven) our javelins at the foe.
That impious race to all their past misdeeds
Would add our blood, injustice still proceeds. "

He spoke: at once their fiery lances flew:
Great Demoptolemus Ulysses slew;
Euryades received the prince's dart;
The goatherd's quiver'd in Pisander's heart;
Fierce Elatus by thine, Eumaeus, falls;
Their fall in thunder echoes round the walls.
The rest retreat: the victors now advance,
Each from the dead resumes his bloody lance.
Again the foe discharge the steely shower;
Again made frustrate by the virgin-power.
Some, turn'd by Pallas, on the threshold fall,
Some wound the gate, some ring against the wall;
Some weak, or ponderous with the brazen head,
Drop harmless on the pavement, sounding dead.

Then bold Amphimedon his javelin cast:
Thy hand, Telemachus, it lightly razed:
And from Ctesippus' arm the spear elanced:
On good Eumaeus' shield and shoulder glanced;
Not lessened of their force (so light the wound)
Each sung along and dropped upon the ground.
Fate doom'd thee next, Eurydamus, to bear,
Thy death ennobled by Ulysses' spear.
By the bold son Amphimedon was slain,
And Polybus renown'd, the faithful swain.
Pierced through the breast the rude Ctesippus bled,
And thus Philaetius gloried o'er the dead:

"There end thy pompous vaunts and high disdain;
O sharp in scandal, voluble and vain!
How weak is mortal pride! To Heaven alone
The event of actions and our fates are known:
Scoffer, behold what gratitude we bear:
The victim's heel is answered with this spear. "

Ulysses brandish'd high his vengeful steel,
And Damastorides that instant fell:
Fast by Leocritus expiring lay,
The prince's javelin tore its bloody way
Through all his bowels: down he tumbled prone,
His batter'd front and brains besmear the stone.

Now Pallas shines confess'd; aloft she spreads
The arm of vengeance o'er their guilty heads:
The dreadful aegis blazes in their eye:
Amazed they see, they tremble, and they fly:
Confused, distracted, through he rooms they fling:
Like oxen madden'd by the breeze's sting,
When sultry days, and long, succeed the gentle spring,
Not half so keen fierce vultures of the chase
Stoop from the mountains on the feather'd race,
When, the wide field extended snares beset,
With conscious dread they shun the quivering net:
No help, no flight; but wounded every way,
Headlong they drop; the fowlers seize their prey.
On all sides thus they double wound on wound,
In prostrate heaps the wretches beat the ground,
Unmanly shrieks precede each dying groan,
And a red deluge floats the reaking stone.

Leiodes first before the victor falls:
The wretched augur thus for mercy calls:
"Oh gracious hear, nor let thy suppliant bleed;
Still undishonoured, or by word or deed,
Thy house, for me remains; by me repress'd
Full oft was check'd the injustice of the rest:
Averse they heard me when I counselled well,
Their hearts were harden'd, and they justly fell.
O spare an augur's consecrated head,
Nor add the blameless to the guilty dead. "

"Priest as thou art! for that detested band
Thy lying prophecies deceived the land;
Against Ulysses have thy vows been made,
For them thy daily orisons were paid:
Yet more, e'en to our bed thy pride aspires:
One common crime one common fate requires. "

Thus speaking, from the ground the sword he took
Which Agelaus' dying hand forsook:
Full through his neck the weighty falchion sped;
Along the pavement roll'd the muttering head.

Phemius alone the hand of vengeance spared,
Phemius the sweet, the heaven-instructed bard.
Beside the gate the reverend minstrel stands;
The lyre now silent trembling in his hands;
Dubious to supplicate the chief, or fly
To Jove's inviolable altar nigh,
Where oft Laertes holy vows had paid,
And oft Ulysses smoking victims laid.
His honour'd harp with care he first set down,
Between the laver and the silver throne;
Then prostrate stretch'd before the dreadful man,
Persuasive thus, with accent soft began:

"O king! to mercy be thy soul inclined,
And spare the poet's ever-gentle kind.
A deed like this thy future fame would wrong,
For dear to gods and men is sacred song.