The sire of Cycnus, monarch of the main,
Meantime laments his son in battle slain,
And vows the victor’s death; nor vows in vain.
For nine long years the smother’d pain he bore:
(Achilles was not ripe for fate before:)
Then when he saw the promised hour was near,
He thus bespoke the god that guides the year:
“Immortal offspring of my brother Jove,
My brightest nephew, and whom best I love,
Whose hands were join’d with mine, to raise the wall
Of tottering Troy, now nodding to her fall,
Dost thou not mourn our power employ’d in vain,
And the defenders of our city slain?
To pass the rest, could noble Hector lie
Unpitied, dragg’d around his native Troy?
And yet the murderer lives: himself by far
A greater plague than all the wasteful war:
He lives, the proud Pelides lives, to boast
Our town destroy’d, our common labour lost.
Oh, could I meet him! but I wish too late:
To prove my trident is not in his fate!
But let him try (for that’s allow’d) thy dart,
And pierce his only penetrable part.”
Apollo bows to the superior throne,
And to his uncle’s anger adds his own;
Then, in a cloud involved, he takes his flight,
Where Greeks and Trojans mix’d in mortal fight,
And found out Paris, lurking where he stood,
And stain’d his arrows with plebeian blood:
Phoebus to him alone the god confess’d,
Then to the recreant knight he thus address’d:
“Dost thou not blush, to spend thy shafts in vain
On a degenerate and ignoble train?
If fame or better vengeance be thy care,
There aim; and with one arrow end the war.”
He said; and show’d from far the blazing shield
And sword, which, but Achilles, none could wield,
And how he moved a god, and mow’d the standing field.
The deity himself directs aright
The envenom’d shaft, and wings the fatal flight.
Thus fell the foremost of the Grecian name,
And he, the base adulterer, boasts the fame;
A spectacle to glad the Trojan train,
And please old Priam, after Hector slain.
If by a female hand he had foreseen
He was to die, his wish had rather been
The lance and double axe of the fair warrior queen.
And now the terror of the Trojan field,
The Grecian honour, ornament, and shield,
High on a pile the unconquer’d chief is placed;
The god that arm’d him first, consumed at last.
Of all the mighty man, the small remains
A little urn, and scarcely fill’d, contains.
Yet great in Homer, still Achilles lives,
And equal to himself, himself survives.
His buckler owns its former lord, and brings
New cause of strife between contending kings;
Who worthiest after him his sword to wield,
Or wear his armour, or sustain his shield.
Ev’n Diomede sat mute, with downcast eyes,
Conscious of wonted worth to win the prize;
Nor Menelaus presumed these arms to claim;
Nor he, the king of men, a greater name:
Two rivals only rose: Laertes’ son,
And the vast bulk of Ajax Telamon.
The king, who cherish’d each with equal love,
And from himself all envy would remove,
Left both to be determined by the laws,
And to the Grecian chiefs transferr’d the cause.