As when the billow gathers fast
With slow and sullen roar
Beneath the keen northwestern blast
Against the sounding shore:
First far at sea it rears its crest,
Then bursts upon the beach,
Or[40] with proud arch and swelling breast,
Where headlands outward reach,
It smites their strength, and bellowing flings
Its silver foam afar;
So, stern and thick, the Danaan kings
And soldiers marched to war.
Each leader gave his men the word;
Each warrior deep in silence heard.
So mute they march’d, thou could’st not ken
They were a mass of speaking men:
And as they strode in martial might,
Their flickering arms shot back the light.
But as at even the folded sheep
Of some rich master stand,
Ten thousand thick their place they keep,
And bide the milkman’s hand,
And more and more they bleat, the more
They hear their lamblings cry;
So, from the Trojan host, uproar
And din rose loud and high.
They were a many-voicèd throng:
Discordant accents there,
That sound from many a differing tongue,
Their differing race declare.
These, Mars had kindled for the fight;
Those, starry-ey’d Athenè’s might,
And savage Terror and Affright,
And Strife, insatiate of wars,
The sister and the mate of Mars:
Strife, that, a pigmy at her birth,
By gathering rumour fed,
Soon plants her feet upon the earth,
And in the heav’n her head.
I add my own rendering of the same; somewhat corrected, but only in the
direction of my own principles and against Arnold’s.
As when the surges of the deep, by Western blore uphoven,
Against the ever-booming strand dash up in roll successive;
A head of waters swelleth first aloof; then under harried
By the rough bottom, roars aloud; till, hollow at the summit,
Sputtering the briny foam abroad, the huge crest tumbleth over:
So then the lines of Danaï, successive and unceasing,
In battle’s close array mov’d on. To his own troops each leader
Gave order: dumbly went the rest (nor mightèst thou discover,
So vast a train of people held a voice within their bosom),
In silence their commanders fearing: all the ranks
wellmarshall’d
Were clad in crafty panoply, which glitter’d on their bodies.
Meantime, as sheep within the yard of some great cattle-master,
While the white milk is drain’d from them, stand round in number
countless,
And, grievèd by their lambs’ complaint, respond with bleat
incessant;
So then along their ample host arose the Troian hurly.
For neither common words spake théy, nor kindred accent utter’d;
But mingled was the tongue of men from divers places summon’d.
By Arès these were urgèd on, those by grey-ey’d Athenè,
By Fear, by Panic, and by Strife immeasurably eager,
The sister and companion[41] of hero-slaying Arès,
Who truly doth at first her crest but humble rear; thereafter,
Planting upon the ground her feet, her head in heaven fixeth.