The works of John Dryden :: :: University of Virginia Library

Æsacus, the son of Priam, loving a country life, forsakes the court; living obscurely, he falls in love with a nymph, who, flying from him, was killed by a serpent; for grief of this, he would have drowned himself; but, by the pity of the gods, is turned into a Cormorant. Priam, not hearing of Æsacus, believes him to be dead, and raises a tomb to preserve his memory. By this transition, which is one of the finest in all Ovid, the poet naturally falls into the story of the Trojan War, which is summed up in the present book; but so very briefly in many places, that Ovid seems more short than Virgil, contrary to his usual style. Yet the House of Fame, which is here described, is one of the most beautiful pieces in the whole Metamorphoses. The fight of Achilles and Cygnus, and the fray betwixt the Lapithœ and Centaurs, yield to no other part of this poet; and particularly the loves and death of Cyllarus and Hylonome, the male and female Centaur, are wonderfully moving.

Priam, to whom the story was unknown,
As dead, deplored his metamorphosed son;
A Cenotaph his name and title kept,
And Hector round the tomb, with all his brothers, wept.

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This pious office Paris did not share;
Absent alone, and author of the war,
Which, for the Spartan queen, the Grecians drew
To avenge the rape, and Asia to subdue.

A thousand ships were manned, to sail the sea;
Nor had their just resentments found delay,
Had not the winds and waves opposed their way.
At Aulis, with united powers, they meet,
But there, cross winds or calms detained the fleet.
Now, while they raise an altar on the shore,
And Jove with solemn sacrifice adore,
A boding sign the priests and people see:
A snake of size immense ascends a tree,
And in the leafy summit spied a nest,
Which, o'er her callow young, a sparrow pressed.
Eight were the birds unfledged; their mother flew,
And hovered round her care, but still in view;
Till the fierce reptile first devoured the brood,
Then seized the fluttering dam, and drank her blood.
This dire ostent the fearful people view;
Calchas alone, by Phœbus taught, foreknew
What heaven decreed; and, with a smiling glance,
Thus gratulates to Greece her happy chance.
“O Argives, we shall conquer; Troy is ours,
But long delays shall first afflict our powers;
Nine years of labour the nine birds portend,
The tenth shall in the town's destruction end.

The serpent, who his maw obscene had filled,
The branches in his curled embraces held;
But as in spires he stood, he turned to stone;
The stony snake retained the figure still his own.

Yet not for this the windbound navy weighed;
Slack were their sails, and Neptune disobeyed.

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Some thought him loath the town should be destroyed,
Whose building had his hands divine employed;
Not so the seer, who knew, and known foreshowed,
The virgin Phœbe, with a virgin's blood,
Must first be reconciled; the common cause
Prevailed; and pity yielding to the laws,
Fair Iphigenia, the devoted maid,
Was, by the weeping priests, in linen robes arrayed.
All mourn her fate, but no relief appeared;
The royal victim bound, the knife already reared;
When that offended Power, who caused their woe,
Relenting ceased her wrath, and stopped the coming blow.
A mist before the ministers she cast,
And in the virgin's room a hind she placed.
The oblation slain, and Phœbe reconciled,
The storm was hushed, and dimpled ocean smiled;
A favourable gale arose from shore,
Which to the port desired the Grecian galleys bore.

Full in the midst of this created space,
Betwixt heaven, earth, and skies, there stands a place
Confining on all three, with triple bound;
Whence all things, though remote, are viewed around,
And thither bring their undulating sound;
The palace of loud Fame; her seat of power,
Placed on the summit of a lofty tower.

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A thousand winding entries, long and wide,
Receive of fresh reports a flowing tide;
A thousand crannies in the walls are made;
Nor gate nor bars exclude the busy trade.
'Tis built of brass, the better to diffuse
The spreading sounds, and multiply the news;
Where echoes in repeated echoes play:
A mart for ever full, and open night and day.
Nor silence is within, nor voice express,
But a deaf noise of sounds that never cease;
Confused, and chiding, like the hollow roar
Of tides, receding from the insulted shore;
Or like the broken thunder, heard from far,
When Jove to distance drives the rolling war.
The courts are filled with a tumultuous din
Of crowds, or issuing forth, or entering in;
A thoroughfare of news; where some devise
Things never heard; some mingle truth with lies;
The troubled air with empty sounds they beat;
Intent to hear, and eager to repeat.
Error sits brooding there; with added train
Of vain credulity, and joys as vain;
Suspicion, with sedition joined, are near;
And rumours raised, and murmurs mixed, and panic fear.
Fame sits aloft, and sees the subject ground,
And seas about, and skies above, inquiring all around.

The goddess gives the alarm; and soon is known
The Grecian fleet, descending on the town.
Fixed on defence, the Trojans are not slow
To guard their shore from an expected foe.
They meet in fight; by Hector's fatal hand
Protesilaus falls, and bites the strand;
Which with expense of blood the Grecians won,
And proved the strength unknown of Priam's son;

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And to their cost the Trojan leaders felt
The Grecian heroes, and what deaths they dealt.

From these first onsets, the Sigæan shore
Was strewed with carcases, and stained with gore.
Neptunian Cygnus troops of Greeks had slain;
Achilles in his car had scoured the plain,
And cleared the Trojan ranks; where'er he fought,
Cygnus, or Hector, through the fields he sought:
Cygnus he found; on him his force essayed;
For Hector was to the tenth year delayed.
His white-maned steeds, that bowed beneath the yoke,
He cheered to courage, with a gentle stroke;
Then urged his fiery chariot on the foe,
And rising shook his lance, in act to throw.
But first he cried, “O youth, be proud to bear
Thy death, ennobled by Pelides' spear.”
The lance pursued the voice without delay;
Nor did the whizzing weapon miss the way,
But pierced his cuirass, with such fury sent,
And signed his bosom with a purple dint.
At this the seed of Neptune: “Goddess-born,
For ornament, not use, these arms are worn;
This helm, and heavy buckler, I can spare,
As only decorations of the war;
So Mars is armed, for glory, not for need.
'Tis somewhat more from Neptune to proceed,
Than from a daughter of the sea to spring;
Thy sire is mortal; mine is Ocean's king.
Secure of death, I should contemn thy dart,
Though naked, and impassible depart.”
He said, and threw; the trembling weapon passed
Through nine bull-hides, each under other placed
On his broad shield, and stuck within the last.
Achilles wrenched it out; and sent again
The hostile gift; the hostile gift was vain.

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He tried a third, a tough well-chosen spear;
The inviolable body stood sincere,
Though Cygnus then did no defence provide,
But scornful offered his unshielded side.

Not otherwise the impatient hero fared,
Than as a bull, encompassed with a guard,
Amid the circus roars; provoked from far
By sight of scarlet, and a sanguine war.
They quit their ground, his bended horns elude,
In vain pursuing, and in vain pursued.

Before to further fight he would advance,
He stood considering, and surveyed his lance.
Doubts if he wielded not a wooden spear
Without a point; he looked, the point was there.
“This is my hand, and this my lance,” he said,
By which so many thousand foes are dead.
O whither is their usual virtue fled!
I had it once; and the Lyrnessian wall,
And Tenedos, confessed it in their fall.
Thy streams, Caicus, rolled a crimson flood;
And Thebes ran red with her own natives' blood.
Twice Telephus employed this piercing steel,
To wound him first, and afterward to heal.
The vigour of this arm was never vain;
And that my wonted prowess I retain,
Witness these heaps of slaughter on the plain.”
He said, and, doubtful of his former deeds,
To some new trial of his force proceeds.
He chose Menœtes from among the rest;
At him he lanced his spear, and pierced his breast;
On the hard earth the Lycian knocked his head,
And lay supine; and forth the spirit fled.

Then thus the hero: “Neither can I blame
The hand, or javelin; both are still the same.
The same I will employ against this foe,
And wish but with the same success to throw.”

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So spoke the chief, and while he spoke he threw;
The weapon with unerring fury flew,
At his left shoulder aimed; nor entrance found;
But back, as from a rock, with swift rebound
Harmless returned; a bloody mark appeared,
Which with false joy the flattered hero cheered.
Wound there was none; the blood that was in view,
The lance before from slain Menœtes drew.

Headlong he leaps from off his lofty car,
And in close fight on foot renews the war;
Raging with high disdain, repeats his blows;
Nor shield nor armour can their force oppose;
Huge cantlets of his buckler strew the ground,
And no defence in his bored arms is found.
But on his flesh no wound or blood is seen;
The sword itself is blunted on the skin.

This vain attempt the chief no longer bears;
But round his hollow temples and his ears,
His buckler beats; the son of Neptune, stunned
With these repeated buffets, quits his ground;
A sickly sweat succeeds, and shades of night;
Inverted nature swims before his sight:
The insulting victor presses on the more,
And treads the steps the vanquished trod before,
Nor rest, nor respite gives. A stone there lay
Behind his trembling foe, and stopped his way;
Achilles took the advantage which he found,
O'erturned, and pushed him backward on the ground.
His buckler held him under, while he pressed,
With both his knees above, his panting breast;
Unlaced his helm; about his chin the twist
He tied, and soon the strangled soul dismissed.

With eager haste he went to strip the dead;
The vanquished body from his arms was fled.

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His sea-god sire, to immortalise his fame,
Had turned it to the bird that bears his name.

A truce succeeds the labours of this day,
And arms suspended with a long delay.
While Trojan walls are kept with watch and ward,
The Greeks before their trenches mount the guard.
The feast approached; when to the blue-eyed Maid,
His vows for Cygnus slain the victor paid,
And a white heifer on her altar laid.
The reeking entrails on the fire they threw,
And to the gods the grateful odour flew;
Heaven had its part in sacrifice; the rest
Was broiled and roasted for the future feast.
The chief invited guests were set around;
And, hunger first assuaged, the bowls were crowned,
Which in deep draughts their cares and labours drowned.
The mellow harp did not their ears employ,
And mute was all the warlike symphony;
Discourse, the food of souls, was their delight,
And pleasing chat prolonged the summer's night.
The subject, deeds of arms; and valour shown,
Or on the Trojan side, or on their own.
Of dangers undertaken, fame achieved,
They talked by turns, the talk by turns relieved.
What things but these could fierce Achilles tell,
Or what could fierce Achilles hear so well?
The last great act performed, of Cygnus slain,
Did most the martial audience entertain;
Wondering to find a body, free by fate
From steel, and which could even that steel rebate.

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Amazed, their admiration they renew;
And scarce Pelides could believe it true.

Then Nestor thus:—“What once this age has known,
In fated Cygnus, and in him alone,
These eyes have seen in Cæneus long before,
Whose body not a thousand swords could bore.
Cæneus in courage and in strength excelled,
And still his Othrys with his fame is filled;
But what did most his martial deeds adorn,
(Though, since, he changed his sex,) a woman born.”

A novelty so strange, and full of fate,
His listening audience asked him to relate.
Achilles thus commends their common suit:—
“O father, first for prudence in repute,
Tell, with that eloquence so much thy own,
What thou hast heard, or what of Cæneus known;
What was he, whence his change of sex begun,
What trophies, joined in wars with thee, he won?
Who conquered him, and in what fatal strife
The youth, without a wound, could lose his life?”

Neleides then:—“Though tardy age, and time,
Have shrunk my sinews, and decayed my prime;
Though much I have forgotten of my store,
Yet, not exhausted, I remember more.
Of all that arms achieved, or peace designed,
That action still is fresher in my mind
Than aught beside. If reverend age can give
To faith a sanction, in my third I live.

“'Twas in my second century, I surveyed
Young Cænis, then a fair Thessalian maid.
Cænis the bright was born to high command;
A princess, and a native of thy land,
Divine Achilles; every tongue proclaimed
Her beauty, and her eyes all hearts inflamed.

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Peleus, thy sire, perhaps had sought her bed,
Among the rest; but he had either led
Thy mother then, or was by promise tied;
But she to him, and all, alike her love denied.

“It was her fortune once, to take her way
Along the sandy margin of the sea;
The Power of Ocean viewed her as she passed,
And, loved as soon as seen, by force embraced.
So fame reports. Her virgin treasure seized,
And his new joys the ravisher so pleased,
That thus, transported, to the nymph he cried,
‘Ask what thou wilt, no prayer shall be denied.’
This also fame relates; the haughty fair,
Who not the rape even of a god could bear,
This answer, proud, returned:—‘To mighty wrongs,
A mighty recompense, of right, belongs.
Give me no more to suffer such a shame;
But change the woman for a better name;
One gift for all.’—She said, and, while she spoke,
A stern, majestic, manly tone she took.
A man she was; and, as the Godhead swore,
To Cæneus turned, who Cænis was before.

“To this the lover adds, without request,
No force of steel should violate his breast.
Glad of the gift, the new-made warrior goes,
And arms among the Greeks, and longs for equal foes.

“Now brave Pirithous, bold Ixion's son,
The love of fair Hippodame had won.
The cloud-begotten race, half men, half beast,
Invited, came to grace the nuptial feast.

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In a cool cave's recess the treat was made,
Whose entrance trees with spreading boughs o'ershade.
They sat: and, summoned by the bridegroom, came,
To mix with those, the Lapithæan name:
Nor wanted I; the roofs with joy resound;
And ‘Hymen, Iö Hymen,’ rung around.
Raised altars shone with holy fires; the bride,
Lovely herself (and lovely by her side
A bevy of bright nymphs, with sober grace,)
Came glittering like a star, and took her place;
Her heavenly form beheld, all wished her joy,
And little wanted, but in vain their wishes all employ.

“For one, most brutal of the brutal blood,
Or whether wine or beauty fired his blood,
Or both at once, beheld with lustful eyes
The bride; at once resolved to make his prize.
Down went the board, and, fastening on her hair,
He seized with sudden force the frighted fair.
'Twas Eurytus began; his bestial kind
His crime pursued; and each as pleased his mind,
Or her, whom chance presented, took; the feast
An image of a taken town expressed.

“The cave resounds with female shrieks: we rise,
Mad with revenge, to make a swift reprise:
And Theseus first:—‘What frenzy has possessed,
O Eurytus,’ he cried, ‘thy brutal breast,

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To wrong Pirithous, and not him alone,
But, while I live, two friends conjoined in one?’

“To justify his threat, he thrusts aside
The crowd of Centaurs, and redeems the bride.
The monster nought replied; for words were vain,
And deeds could only deeds unjust maintain;
But answers with his hand, and forward pressed,
With blows redoubled, on his face and breast.
An ample goblet stood, of antique mould,
And rough with figures of the rising gold;
The hero snatched it up, and tossed in air
Full at the front of the foul ravisher:
He falls, and falling vomits forth a flood
Of wine, and foam, and brains, and mingled blood.
Half roaring, and half neighing through the hall,
‘Arms, arms!’ the double-formed with fury call,
To wreak their brother's death. A medley flight
Of bowls and jars, at first, supply the fight,
Once instruments of feasts, but now of fate;
Wine animates their rage, and arms their hate.

“Bold Amycus from the robbed vestry brings
The chalices of heaven, and holy things
Of precious weight; a sconce, that hung on high,
With tapers filled, to light the sacristy,
Torn from the cord, with his unhallowed hand
He threw amid the Lapithæan band.
On Celadon the ruin fell, and left
His face of feature and of form bereft;
So, when some brawny sacrificer knocks,
Before an altar led, an offered ox,
His eyeballs, rooted out, are thrown to ground,
His nose dismantled in his mouth is found,
His jaws, cheeks, front, one undistinguished wound.

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“This, Belates, the avenger, could not brook;
But, by the foot, a maple-board he took,
And hurled at Amycus; his chin is bent
Against his chest, and down the Centaur sent,
Whom, sputtering bloody teeth, the second blow
Of his drawn sword dispatched to shades below.

“Grineus was near; and cast a furious look
On the side-altar, censed with sacred smoke,
And bright with flaming fires; ‘The gods,’ he cried,
‘Have with their holy trade our hands supplied:
Why use we not their gifts?’—Then from the floor
An altar-stone he heaved, with all the load it bore;
Altar and altar's freight together flew,
Where thickest thronged the Lapithæan crew,
And, Broteas and at once Oryus slew.
Oryus' mother, Mycale, was known
Down from her sphere to draw the labouring moon.

“Exadius cried: ‘Unpunished shall not go
This fact, if arms are found against the foe.’
He looked about, where on a pine were spread
The votive horns of a stag's branching head:
At Grineus these he throws; so just they fly,
That the sharp antlers stuck in either eye.
Breathless and blind he fell; with blood besmeared,
His eyeballs beaten out hung dangling on his beard.
Fierce Rhætus from the hearth a burning brand
Selects, and whirling waves, till from his hand
The fire took flame; then dashed it from the right,
On fair Charaxus' temples, near the sight:

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The whistling pest came on, and pierced the bone,
And caught the yellow hair, that shrivelled while it shone;
Caught, like dry stubble fired, or like seerwood;
Yet from the wound ensued no purple flood,
But looked a bubbling mass of frying blood.
His blazing locks sent forth a crackling sound,
And hissed, like red-hot iron within the smithy drowned.
The wounded warrior shook his flaming hair,
Then (what a team of horse could hardly rear,)
He heaves the threshold-stone, but could not throw;
The weight itself forbade the threatened blow;
Which, dropping from his lifted arms, came down
Full on Cometes' head, and crushed his crown.
Nor Rhætus then retained his joy; but said,
‘So by their fellows may our foes be sped.’
Then with redoubled strokes he plies his head:
The burning lever not deludes his pains,
But drives the battered skull within the brains.

“Thus flushed, the conqueror, with force renewed,
Evagrus, Dryas, Corythus, pursued.
First, Corythus, with downy cheeks, he slew;
Whose fall when fierce Evagrus had in view,
He cried, ‘What palm is from a beardless prey?’
Rhætus prevents what more he had to say;
And drove within his mouth the fiery death,
Which entered hissing in, and choked his breath.
At Dryas next he flew; but weary chance
No longer would the same success advance;
But, while he whirled in fiery circles round
The brand, a sharpened stake strong Dryas found,
And in the shoulder's joint inflicts the wound.

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The weapon struck; which, roaring out with pain,
He drew; nor longer durst the fight maintain,
But turned his back for fear, and fled amain.
With him fled Orneus, with like dread possessed;
Thaumas and Medon, wounded in the breast,
And Mermeros, in the late race renowned,
Now limping ran, and tardy with his wound.
Pholus and Melaneus from fight withdrew,
And Abas maimed, who boars encountering slew;
And augur Astylos, whose art in vain
From fight dissuaded the four-footed train,
Now beat the hoof with Nessus on the plain;
But to his fellow cried, ‘Be safely slow;
Thy death deferred is due to great Alcides' bow.’

“Meantime, strong Dryas urged his chance so well,
That Lycidas, Areos, Imbreus fell;
All, one by one, and fighting face to face:
Crenæus fled, to fall with more disgrace;
For, fearful while he looked behind, he bore,
Betwixt his nose and front, the blow before.
Amid the noise and tumult of the fray,
Snoring and drunk with wine, Aphidas lay.
Even then the bowl within his hand he kept,
And on a bear's rough hide securely slept.
Him Phorbas with his flying dart transfixed;
‘Take thy next draught with Stygian waters mixed,
And sleep thy fill,’ the insulting victor cried;
Surprised with death unfelt, the Centaur died:
The ruddy vomit, as he breathed his soul,
Repassed his throat, and filled his empty bowl.

“I saw Petræus' arms employed around
A well-grown oak, to root it from the ground.

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This way, and that, he wrenched the fibrous bands;
The trunk was like a sapling in his hands,
And still obeyed the bent: while thus he stood,
Pirithous' dart drove on, and nailed him to the wood.
Lycus and Chromys fell, by him oppressed:
Helops and Dictys added to the rest
A nobler palm: Helops, through either ear
Transfixed, received the penetrating spear.
This Dictys saw; and, seized with sudden fright,
Leapt headlong from the hill of steepy height,
And crushed an ash beneath, that could not bear his weight.
The shattered tree receives his fall, and strikes,
Within his full-blown paunch, the sharpened spikes.
Strong Aphareus had heaved a mighty stone,
The fragment of a rock, and would have thrown;
But Theseus, with a club of hardened oak,
The cubit-bone of the bold Centaur broke,
And left him maimed, nor seconded the stroke;
Then leapt on tall Bianor's back; (who bore
No mortal burden but his own, before,)
Pressed with his knees his sides; the double man,
His speed with spurs increased, unwilling ran.
One hand the hero fastened on his locks;
His other plied him with repeated strokes.
The club hung round his ears, and battered brows;
He falls; and, lashing up his heels, his rider throws.

“The same Herculean arms Nedymnus wound,
And lay by him Lycotas on the ground;
And Hippasus, whose beard his breast invades;
And Ripheus, haunter of the woodland shades;

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And Tereus, used with mountain-bears to strive;
And from their dens to draw the indignant beasts alive.

“Demoleon could not bear this hateful sight,
Or the long fortune of the Athenian knight;
But pulled with all his force, to disengage
From earth a pine, the product of an age.
The root stuck fast: the broken trunk he sent
At Theseus: Theseus frustrates his intent,
And leaps aside, by Pallas warned, the blow
To shun: (for so he said; and we believed it so.)
Yet not in vain the enormous weight was cast,
Which Crantor's body sundered at the waist:
Thy father's squire, Achilles, and his care;
Whom, conquered in the Dolopeian war,
Their king, his present ruin to prevent,
A pledge of peace implored, to Peleus sent.
Thy sire, with grieving eyes, beheld his fate;
And cried, ‘Not long, loved Crantor, shalt thou wait
Thy vowed revenge.’ At once he said, and threw
His ashen-spear, which quivered as it flew,
With all his force and all his soul applied;
The sharp point entered in the Centaur's side:
Both hands, to wrench it out, the monster joined,
And wrenched it out, but left the steel behind.
Stuck in his lungs it stood; enraged he rears
His hoofs, and down to ground thy father bears.
Thus trampled under foot, his shield defends
His head; his other hand the lance protends.
Even while he lay extended on the dust,
He sped the Centaur, with one single thrust.
Two more his lance before transfixed from far,
And two his sword had slain in closer war.
To these was added Dorylas; who spread
A bull's two goring horns around his head.

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With these he pushed; in blood already dyed,
Him, fearless, I approached, and thus defied:
‘Now, monster, now, by proof it shall appear,
Whether thy horns are sharper, or my spear.’
At this, I threw; for want of other ward,
He lifted up his hand, his front to guard.
His hand it passed, and fixed it to his brow.
Loud shouts of ours attend the lucky blow:
Him Peleus finished, with a second wound,
Which through the navel pierced; he reeled around,
And dragged his dangling bowels on the ground;
Trod what he dragged, and what he trod he crushed;
And to his mother earth, with empty belly, rushed.

“Nor could thy form, O Cyllarus, foreshow
Thy fate, if form to monsters men allow:
Just bloomed thy beard, thy beard of golden hue;
Thy locks, in golden waves, about thy shoulders flew.
Sprightly thy look; thy shapes in every part
So clean, as might instruct the sculptor's art,
As far as man extended; where began
The beast, the beast was equal to the man.
Add but a horse's head and neck, and he,
O Castor, was a courser worthy thee.
So was his back proportioned for the seat;
So rose his brawny chest; so swiftly moved his feet.
Coal-black his colour, but like jet it shone;
His legs and flowing tail were white alone.
Beloved by many maidens of his kind,
But fair Hylonome possessed his mind;
Hylonome, for features, and for face,
Excelling all the nymphs of double race.

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Nor less her blandishments, than beauty, move;
At once both loving, and confessing love.
For him she dressed; for him with female care
She combed, and set in curls, her auburn hair.
Of roses, violets, and lilies mixed,
And sprigs of flowing rosemary betwixt,
She formed the chaplet, that adorned her front;
In waters of the Pegasæan fount,
And in the streams that from the fountain play,
She washed her face, and bathed her twice a day.
The scarf of furs, that hung below her side,
Was ermine, or the panther's spotted pride;
Spoils of no common beast. With equal flame
They loved; their sylvan pleasures were the same:
All day they hunted; and when day expired,
Together to some shady cave retired.
Invited, to the nuptials both repair;
And, side by side, they both engage in war.

“Uncertain from what hand, a flying dart
At Cyllarus was sent, which pierced his heart.
The javelin drawn from out the mortal wound,
He faints with staggering steps, and seeks the ground:
The fair within her arms received his fall,
And strove his wandering spirits to recall;
And while her hand the streaming blood opposed,
Joined face to face, his lips with hers she closed.
Stifled with kisses, a sweet death he dies;
She fills the fields with undistinguished cries;
At least her words were in her clamour drowned;
For my stunned ears received no vocal sound.
In madness of her grief, she seized the dart
New-drawn, and reeking from her lover's heart;

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To her bare bosom the sharp point applied,
And wounded fell; and, falling by his side,
Embraced him in her arms, and thus embracing died.

“Even still, methinks, I see Phæocomes;
Strange was his habit, and as odd his dress.
Six lions' hides, with thongs together fast,
His upper part defended to his waist;
And where man ended, the continued vest,
Spread on his back, the houss and trappings of a beast.
A stump too heavy for a team to draw,
(It seems a fable, though the fact I saw,)
He threw at Pholon; the descending blow
Divides the skull, and cleaves his head in two.
The brains, from nose and mouth, and either ear,
Came issuing out, as through a colander
The curdled milk; or from the press the whey,
Driven down by weights above, is drained away.

“But him, while stooping down to spoil the slain,
Pierced through the paunch, I tumbled on the plain.
Then Chthonius and Teleboas I slew;
A fork the former armed; a dart his fellow threw:
The javelin wounded me; behold the scar.
Then was my time to seek the Trojan war;
Then I was Hector's match in open field;
But he was then unborn, at least a child;
Now, I am nothing. I forbear to tell
By Periphantes how Pyretus fell,
The Centaur by the Knight; nor will I stay
On Amphix, or what deaths he dealt that day;

188

What honour, with a pointless lance, he won,
Stuck in the front of a four-footed man;
What fame young Macareus obtained in fight,
Or dwell on Nessus, now returned from flight;
How prophet Mopsus not alone divined,
Whose valour equalled his foreseeing mind.

“Already Cæneus, with his conquering hand,
Had slaughtered five, the boldest of their band;
Pyrachmus, Helymus, Antimachus,
Bromus the brave, and stronger Stiphelus;
Their names I numbered, and remember well,
No trace remaining, by what wounds they fell.

“Latreus, the bulkiest of the double race,
Whom the spoiled arms of slain Halesus grace,
In years retaining still his youthful might,
Though his black hairs were interspersed with white,
Betwixt the embattled ranks began to prance,
Proud of his helm, and Macedonian lance;
And rode the ring around, that either host
Might hear him, while he made this empty boast:
‘And from a strumpet shall we suffer shame?
For Cænis still, not Cæneus, is thy name;
And still the native softness of thy kind
Prevails, and leaves the woman in thy mind.
Remember what thou wert; what price was paid
To change thy sex, to make thee not a maid;
And but a man in show; go card and spin,
And leave the business of the war to men.’

“While thus the boaster exercised his pride,
The fatal spear of Cæneus reached his side;
Just in the mixture of the kinds it ran,
Betwixt the nether breast and upper man.
The monster, mad with rage, and stung with smart,
His lance directed at the hero's heart:

189

It strook; but bounded from his hardened breast,
Like hail from tiles, which the safe house invest;
Nor seemed the stroke with more effect to come,
Than a small pebble falling on a drum.
He next his falchion tried, in closer fight;
But the keen falchion had no power to bite.
He thrust; the blunted point returned again:—
‘Since downright blows,’ he cried, ‘and thrusts are vain,
I'll prove his side;’—in strong embraces held,
He proved his side; his side the sword repelled;
His hollow belly echoed to the stroke:
Untouched his body, as a solid rock;
Aimed at his neck at last, the blade in shivers broke.

“The impassive knight stood idle, to deride
His rage, and offered oft his naked side;
At length, ‘Now, monster, in thy turn,’ he cried,
‘Try thou the strength of Cæneus:’—at the word
He thrust; and in his shoulder plunged the sword.
Then writhed his hand; and, as he drove it down
Deep in his breast, made many wounds in one.

“The Centaurs saw, enraged, the unhoped success,
And, rushing on in crowds, together press.
At him, and him alone, their darts they threw;
Repulsed they from his fated body flew.
Amazed they stood; till Monychus began,—
‘O shame, a nation conquered by a man!
A woman-man; yet more a man is he,
Than all our race; and what he was, are we.
Now, what avail our nerves? the united force
Of two the strongest creatures, man and horse?

190

Nor goddess-born, nor of Ixion's seed
We seem, (a lover built for Juno's bed,)
Mastered by this half man. Whole mountains throw
With woods at once, and bury him below.
This only way remains. Nor need we doubt
To choke the soul within, though not to force it out.
Heap weights, instead of wounds:’—he chanced to see
Where southern storms had rooted up a tree;
This, raised from earth, against the foe he threw;
The example shown, his fellow brutes pursue.
With forest-loads the warrior they invade;
Othrys and Pelion soon were void of shade,
And spreading groves were naked mountains made.
Pressed with the burden, Cæneus pants for breath,
And on his shoulders bears the wooden death.
To heave the intolerable weight he tries;
At length it rose above his mouth and eyes.
Yet still he heaves; and, struggling with despair,
Shakes all aside, and gains a gulp of air;
A short relief, which but prolongs his pain:
He faints by fits, and then respires again.
At last, the burden only nods above,
As when an earthquake stirs the Idæan grove.
Doubtful his death; he suffocated seemed
To most; but otherwise our Mopsus deemed,
Who said he saw a yellow bird arise
From out the pile, and cleave the liquid skies.
I saw it too, with golden feathers bright,
Nor e'er before beheld so strange a sight;
Whom Mopsus viewing, as it soared around
Our troop, and heard the pinions' rattling sound,

191

‘All hail,’ he cried, ‘thy country's grace and love;
Once first of men below, now first of birds above!’—
Its author to the story gave belief;
For us, our courage was increased by grief:
Ashamed to see a single man, pursued
With odds, to sink beneath a multitude,
We pushed the foe, and forced to shameful flight:
Part fell, and part escaped by favour of the night.”

This tale, by Nestor told, did much displease
Tlepolemus, the seed of Hercules;
For often he had heard his father say,
That he himself was present at the fray,
And more than shared the glories of the day.

“Old Chronicle,” he said, “among the rest,
You might have named Alcides at the least;
Is he not worth your praise?”—The Pylian prince
Sighed ere he spoke, then made this proud defence:—
“My former woes, in long oblivion drowned,
I would have lost, but you renew the wound;
Better to pass him o'er, than to relate
The cause I have your mighty sire to hate.
His fame has filled the world, and reached the sky;
Which, oh, I wish with truth I could deny!
We praise not Hector, though his name we know
Is great in arms; 'tis hard to praise a foe.
He, your great father, levelled to the ground
Messenia's tower; nor better fortune found
Elis, and Pylas; that, a neighbouring state,
And this, my own; both guiltless of their fate.
To pass the rest, twelve, wanting one, he slew,
My brethren, who their birth from Neleus drew;
All youths of early promise, had they lived;
By him they perished; I alone survived.
The rest were easy conquest; but the fate
Of Periclymenos is wondrous to relate.

192

To him our common grandsire of the main
Had given to change his form, and, changed, resume again.
Varied at pleasure, every shape he tried,
And in all beasts Alcides still defied;
Vanquished on earth, at length he soared above,
Changed to the bird, that bears the bolt of Jove.
The new dissembled eagle, now endued
With beak and pounces, Hercules pursued,
And cuffed his manly cheeks, and tore his face,
Then, safe retired, and towered in empty space.
Alcides bore not long his flying foe,
But, bending his inevitable bow,
Reached him in air, suspended as he stood,
And in his pinion fixed the feathered wood.
Light was the wound; but in the sinew hung
The point, and his disabled wing unstrung.
He wheeled in air, and stretched his vans in vain;
His vans no longer could his flight sustain;
For, while one gathered wind, one unsupplied
Hung drooping down, nor poised his other side.
He fell; the shaft, that slightly was impressed,
Now from his heavy fall with weight increased,
Drove through his neck aslant; he spurns the ground,
And the soul issues through the weazand's wound.

“Now, brave commander of the Rhodian seas,
What praise is due from me to Hercules?
Silence is all the vengeance I decree
For my slain brothers; but 'tis peace with thee.”

Thus with a flowing tongue old Nestor spoke;
Then, to full bowls each other they provoke;
At length, with weariness and wine opprest,
They rise from table, and withdraw to rest.

The sire of Cygnus, monarch of the main,
Meantime laments his son in battle slain;
And vows the victor's death, nor vows in vain.

193

For nine long years the smothered 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 joined with mine, to raise the wall
Of tottering Troy, now nodding to her fall;
Dost thou not mourn our power employed in vain,
And the defenders of our city slain?
To pass the rest, could noble Hector lie
Unpitied, dragged 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 destroyed, our common labour lost.
O 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 allowed) 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 mixed in mortal fight;
And found out Paris, lurking where he stood,
And stained his arrows with plebeian blood.
Phœbus to him alone the god confessed,
Then to the recreant knight he thus addressed:—
“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.”

194

He said; and showed from far the blazing shield
And sword, which but Achilles none could wield;
And how he moved a god, and mowed the standing field.
The deity himself directs aright
The envenomed 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 unconquered chief is placed;
The god, that armed him first, consumed at last.
Of all the mighty man, the small remains
A little urn, and scarcely filled, 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 betwixt contending kings;
Who worthiest, after him, his sword to wield,
Or wear his armour, or sustain his shield.
Even Diomede sat mute, with downcast eyes,
Conscious of wanted worth to win the prize;
Nor Menelaus presumed these arms to claim,
Nor he the king of men, a greater name.

195

Two rivals only rose; Laertes' son,
And the vast bulk of Ajax Telamon.
The king, who cherished each with equal love,
And from himself all envy would remove,
Left both to be determined by the laws,
And to the Grecian chiefs transferred the cause.