No More Learning

"

He spake: and, speaking, leaps from off the car:
Patroclus lights, and sternly waits the war.
As when two vultures on the mountain's height
Stoop with resounding pinions to the fight;
They cuff, they tear, they raise a screaming cry;
The desert echoes, and the rocks reply:
The warriors thus opposed in arms, engage
With equal clamours, and with equal rage.

Jove view'd the combat: whose event foreseen,
He thus bespoke his sister and his queen:
"The hour draws on; the destinies ordain,(245)
My godlike son shall press the Phrygian plain:
Already on the verge of death he stands,
His life is owed to fierce Patroclus' hands,
What passions in a parent's breast debate!
Say, shall I snatch him from impending fate,
And send him safe to Lycia, distant far
From all the dangers and the toils of war;
Or to his doom my bravest offspring yield,
And fatten, with celestial blood, the field? "

Then thus the goddess with the radiant eyes:
"What words are these, O sovereign of the skies!
Short is the date prescribed to mortal man;
Shall Jove for one extend the narrow span,
Whose bounds were fix'd before his race began?
How many sons of gods, foredoom'd to death,
Before proud Ilion must resign their breath!
Were thine exempt, debate would rise above,
And murmuring powers condemn their partial Jove.
Give the bold chief a glorious fate in fight;
And when the ascending soul has wing'd her flight,
Let Sleep and Death convey, by thy command,
The breathless body to his native land.
His friends and people, to his future praise,
A marble tomb and pyramid shall raise,
And lasting honours to his ashes give;
His fame ('tis all the dead can have) shall live. "

She said: the cloud-compeller, overcome,
Assents to fate, and ratifies the doom.
Then touch'd with grief, the weeping heavens distill'd
A shower of blood o'er all the fatal field:
The god, his eyes averting from the plain,
Laments his son, predestined to be slain,
Far from the Lycian shores, his happy native reign.
Now met in arms, the combatants appear;
Each heaved the shield, and poised the lifted spear;
From strong Patroclus' hand the javelin fled,
And pass'd the groin of valiant Thrasymed;
The nerves unbraced no more his bulk sustain,
He falls, and falling bites the bloody plain.
Two sounding darts the Lycian leader threw:
The first aloof with erring fury flew,
The next transpierced Achilles' mortal steed,
The generous Pedasus of Theban breed:
Fix'd in the shoulder's joint, he reel'd around,
Roll'd in the bloody dust, and paw'd the slippery ground.
His sudden fall the entangled harness broke;
Each axle crackled, and the chariot shook:
When bold Automedon, to disengage
The starting coursers, and restrain their rage,
Divides the traces with his sword, and freed
The encumbered chariot from the dying steed:
The rest move on, obedient to the rein:
The car rolls slowly o'er the dusty plain.
The towering chiefs to fiercer fight advance:
And first Sarpedon whirl'd his weighty lance,
Which o'er the warrior's shoulder took its course,
And spent in empty air its dying force.
Not so Patroclus' never-erring dart;
Aim'd at his breast it pierced a mortal part,
Where the strong fibres bind the solid heart.
Then as the mountain oak, or poplar tall,
Or pine (fit mast for some great admiral)
Nods to the axe, till with a groaning sound
It sinks, and spreads its honours on the ground,
Thus fell the king; and laid on earth supine,
Before his chariot stretch'd his form divine:
He grasp'd the dust distain'd with streaming gore,
And, pale in death, lay groaning on the shore.
So lies a bull beneath the lion's paws,
While the grim savage grinds with foamy jaws
The trembling limbs, and sucks the smoking blood;
Deep groans, and hollow roars, rebellow through the wood.

Then to the leader of the Lycian band
The dying chief address'd his last command;
"Glaucus, be bold; thy task be first to dare
The glorious dangers of destructive war,
To lead my troops, to combat at their head,
Incite the living, and supply the dead.
Tell them, I charged them with my latest breath
Not unrevenged to bear Sarpedon's death.
What grief, what shame, must Glaucus undergo,
If these spoil'd arms adorn a Grecian foe!
Then as a friend, and as a warrior fight;
Defend my body, conquer in my right:
That, taught by great examples, all may try
Like thee to vanquish, or like me to die. "
He ceased; the Fates suppress'd his labouring breath,
And his eyes darken'd with the shades of death.
The insulting victor with disdain bestrode
The prostrate prince, and on his bosom trod;
Then drew the weapon from his panting heart,
The reeking fibres clinging to the dart;
From the wide wound gush'd out a stream of blood,
And the soul issued in the purple flood.
His flying steeds the Myrmidons detain,
Unguided now, their mighty master slain.
All-impotent of aid, transfix'd with grief,
Unhappy Glaucus heard the dying chief:
His painful arm, yet useless with the smart
Inflicted late by Teucer's deadly dart,
Supported on his better hand he stay'd:
To Phoebus then ('twas all he could) he pray'd:

"All-seeing monarch! whether Lycia's coast,
Or sacred Ilion, thy bright presence boast,
Powerful alike to ease the wretch's smart;
O hear me! god of every healing art!
Lo! stiff with clotted blood, and pierced with pain,
That thrills my arm, and shoots through every vein,
I stand unable to sustain the spear,
And sigh, at distance from the glorious war.