TO A SHIP.
OD. i. 14.
YET on fresh billows seaward wilt thou ride,
O ship? What dost thou? Seek a hav’n, and there
Rest thee: for lo! thy side
Is oarless all and bare,
And the swift south-west wind hath maimed thy mast,
And thy yards creak, and, every cable lost,
Yield must thy keel at last
On pitiless sea-waves tossed
Too rudely. Goodly canvas is not thine,
Nor gods, to hear thee now, when need is sorest:—
Though thou—a Pontic pine,
Child of a stately forest,—
Boastest high name and empty pedigree,
Pale seamen little trust the gaudy sail:
Stay, unless doomed to be
The plaything of the gale.
Flee—what of late sore burden was to me,
Now a sad memory and a bitter pain,—
Those shining Cyclads flee
That stud the far-off main.
TO VIRGIL.
OD. i. 24.
UNSHAMED, unchecked, for one so dear
We sorrow. Lead the mournful choir,
Melpomene, to whom thy sire
Gave harp, and song-notes liquid-clear!
Sleeps He the sleep that knows no morn?
Oh Honour, oh twin-born with Right,
Pure Faith, and Truth that loves the light,
When shall again his like be born?
Many a kind heart for Him makes moan;
Thine, Virgil, first. But ah! in vain
Thy love bids heaven restore again
That which it took not as a loan:
Were sweeter lute than Orpheus given
To thee, did trees thy voice obey;
The blood revisits not the clay
Which He, with lifted wand, hath driven
Into his dark assemblage, who
Unlocks not fate to mortal’s prayer.
Hard lot! Yet light their griefs who BEAR
The ills which they may not undo.
TO THE FOUNTAIN OF BANDUSIA.
OD. iii. 13.
BANDUSIA, stainless mirror of the sky!
Thine is the flower-crown’d bowl, for thee shall die,
When dawns again yon sun, the kid;
Whose budding horns, half-seen, half-hid,
Challenge to dalliance or to strife—in vain!
Soon must the hope of the wild herd be slain,
And those cold springs of thine
With blood incarnadine.
Fierce glows the Dog-star, but his fiery beam
Toucheth not thee: still grateful thy cool stream
To labour-wearied ox,
Or wanderer from the flocks:
And henceforth thou shalt be a royal fountain:
My harp shall tell how from yon cavernous mountain,
Topt by the brown oak-tree,
Thou breakest babblingly.
TO IBYCUS’S WIFE.
OD. ii. 15.
SPOUSE of penniless Ibycus,
Thus late, bring to a close all thy delinquencies,
All thy studious infamy:—
Nearing swiftly the grave—(that not an early one)—
Cease girls’ sport to participate,
Blurring stars which were else cloudlessly brilliant.
What suits her who is beautiful
Suits not equally thee: rightly devastates
Thy fair daughter the homes of men,
Wild as Thyad, who wakes stirred by the kettle-drums.
Nothus’ beauty constraining her,
Like some kid at his play, holds she her revelry:
Thy years stately Luceria’s
Wools more fitly become—not din of harpsichords,
Not pink-petallèd roseblossoms,
Not casks drained by an old lip to the sediment.
SORACTE.
OD. i. 9.
ONE dazzling mass of solid snow
Soracte stands; the bent woods fret
Beneath their load; and, sharpest-set
With frost, the streams have ceased to flow.
Pile on great faggots and break up
The ice: let influence more benign
Enter with four-years-treasured wine,
Fetched in the ponderous Sabine cup:
Leave to the Gods all else. When they
Have once bid rest the winds that war
Over the passionate seas, no more
Grey ash and cypress rock and sway.
Ask not what future suns shall bring,
Count to-day gain, whate’er it chance
To be: nor, young man, scorn the dance,
Nor deem sweet Love an idle thing,
Ere Time thy April youth hath changed
To sourness. Park and public walk
Attract thee now, and whispered talk
At twilight meetings pre-arranged;
Hear now the pretty laugh that tells
In what dim corner lurks thy love;
And snatch a bracelet or a glove
From wrist or hand that scarce rebels.
TO LEUCONÖE.
OD. i. 11.
SEEK not, for thou shalt not find it, what my end, what thine shall
be;
Ask not of Chaldæa’s science what God wills, Leuconöe:
Better far, what comes, to bear it. Haply many a wintry blast
Waits thee still; and this, it may be, Jove ordains to be thy last,
Which flings now the flagging sea-wave on the obstinate
sandstone-reef.
Be thou wise: fill up the wine-cup; shortening, since the time is
brief,
Hopes that reach into the future. While I speak, hath stol’n away
Jealous Time. Mistrust To-morrow, catch the blossom of To-day.
JUNO’S SPEECH.
OD. iii. 3.
THE just man’s single-purposed mind
Not furious mobs that prompt to ill
May move, nor kings’ frowns shake his will
Which is as rock; not warrior-winds
That keep the seas in wild unrest;
Nor bolt by Jove’s own finger hurled:
The fragments of a shivered world
Would crash round him still self-possest.
Jove’s wandering son reached, thus endowed,
The fiery bastions of the skies;
Thus Pollux; with them Cæsar lies
Beside his nectar, radiant-browed.
For this rewarded, tiger-drawn
Rode Bacchus, reining necks before
Untamed; for this War’s horses bore
Quirinus up from Acheron,
When in heav’n’s conclave Juno said,
Thrice welcomed: “Troy is in the dust;
Troy, by a judge accursed, unjust,
And that strange woman prostrated.
“The day Laomedon ignored
His god-pledged word, resigned to me
And Pallas ever-pure, was she,
Her people, and their traitor lord.
“No more the Greek girl’s guilty guest
Sits splendour-girt: Priam’s perjured sons
Find not against the mighty ones
Of Greece a shield in Hector’s breast:
“And, long drawn out by private jars,
The war sleeps. Lo! my wrath is o’er:
And him the Trojan vestal bore
(Sprung of that hated line) to Mars,
“To Mars restore I. His be rest
In halls of light: by him be drained
The nectar-bowl, his place obtained
In the calm companies of the blest.
“While betwixt Rome and Ilion raves
A length of ocean, where they will
Rise empires for the exiles still:
While Paris’s and Priam’s graves
“Are hoof-trod, and the she-wolf breeds
Securely there, unharmed shall stand
Rome’s lustrous Capitol, her hand
Impose proud laws on trampled Medes.
“Wide-feared, to far-off climes be borne
Her story; where the central main
Europe and Libya parts in twain,
Where full Nile laves a land of corn:
“The buried secret of the mine,
(Best left there) resolute to spurn,
And not to man’s base uses turn
With hand that spares not things divine.
“Earth’s utmost end, where’er it be,
May her hosts reach; careering proud
O’er lands where watery rain and cloud,
Or where wild suns hold revelry.
“But, to the soldier-sons of Rome,
Tied by this law, such fates are willed;
That they seek never to rebuild,
Too fond, too bold, their grandsires’ home.
“With darkest omens, deadliest strife,
Shall Troy, raised up again, repeat
Her history; I the victor-fleet
Shall lead, Jove’s sister and his wife.
“Thrice let Apollo rear the wall
Of brass; and thrice my Greeks shall hew
The fabric down; thrice matrons rue
In chains their sons’, their husbands’ fall.”
Ill my light lyre such notes beseem.
Stay, Muse; nor, wayward still, rehearse
God-utterances in puny verse
That may but mar a mighty theme.
TO A FAUN.
OD. iii. 18.
WOOER of young Nymphs who fly thee,
Lightly o’er my sunlit lawn
Trip, and go, nor injured by thee
Be my weanling herds, O Faun:
If the kid his doomed head bows, and
Brims with wine the loving cup,
When the year is full; and thousand
Scents from altars hoar go up.
Each flock in the rich grass gambols
When the month comes which is thine;
And the happy village rambles
Fieldward with the idle kine:
Lambs play on, the wolf their neighbour:
Wild woods deck thee with their spoil;
And with glee the sons of labour
Stamp thrice on their foe, the soil.
TO LYCE.
OD. iv. 13.
LYCE, the gods have listened to my prayer;
The gods have listened, Lyce. Thou art grey,
And still would’st thou seem fair;
Still unshamed drink, and play,
And, wine-flushed, woo slow-answering Love with weak
Shrill pipings. With young Chia He doth dwell,
Queen of the harp; her cheek
Is his sweet citadel:—
He marked the withered oak, and on he flew
Intolerant; shrank from Lyce grim and wrinkled,
Whose teeth are ghastly-blue,
Whose temples snow-besprinkled:—
Not purple, not the brightest gem that glows,
Brings back to her the years which, fleeting fast,
Time hath once shut in those
Dark annals of the Past.
Oh, where is all thy loveliness? soft hue
And motions soft? Oh, what of Her doth rest,
Her, who breathed love, who drew
My heart out of my breast?
Fair, and far-famed, and subtly sweet, thy face
Ranked next to Cinara’s. But to Cinara fate
Gave but a few years’ grace;
And lets live, all too late,
Lyce, the rival of the beldam crow:
That fiery youth may see with scornful brow
The torch that long ago
Beamed bright, a cinder now.
TO HIS SLAVE.
OD. i. 38.
PERSIAN grandeur I abhor;
Linden-wreathèd crowns, avaunt:
Boy, I bid thee not explore
Woods which latest roses haunt:
Try on nought thy busy craft
Save plain myrtle; so arrayed
Thou shalt fetch, I drain, the draught
Fitliest ’neath the scant vine-shade.
THE DEAD OX.
GEORG. IV.
LO! smoking in the stubborn plough, the ox
Falls, from his lip foam gushing crimson-stained,
And sobs his life out. Sad of face the ploughman
Moves, disentangling from his comrade’s corpse
The lone survivor: and its work half-done,
Abandoned in the furrow stands the plough.
Not shadiest forest-depths, not softest lawns,
May move him now: not river amber-pure,
That volumes o’er the cragstones to the plain.
Powerless the broad sides, glazed the rayless eye,
And low and lower sinks the ponderous neck.
What thank hath he for all the toil he toiled,
The heavy-clodded land in man’s behoof
Upturning? Yet the grape of Italy,
The stored-up feast hath wrought no harm to him:
Green leaf and taintless grass are all their fare;
The clear rill or the travel-freshen’d stream
Their cup: nor one care mars their honest sleep.
FROM THEOCRITUS.
IDYLL. VII.
SCARCE midway were we yet, nor yet descried
The stone that hides what once was Brasidas:
When there drew near a wayfarer from Crete,
Young Lycidas, the Muses’ votary.
The horned herd was his care: a glance might tell
So much: for every inch a herdsman he.
Slung o’er his shoulder was a ruddy hide
Torn from a he-goat, shaggy, tangle-haired,
That reeked of rennet yet: a broad belt clasped
A patched cloak round his breast, and for a staff
A gnarled wild-olive bough his right hand bore.
Soon with a quiet smile he spoke—his eye
Twinkled, and laughter sat upon his lip:
“And whither ploddest thou thy weary way
Beneath the noontide sun, Simichides?
For now the lizard sleeps upon the wall,
The crested lark hath closed his wandering wing.
Speed’st thou, a bidd’n guest, to some reveller’s board?
Or townwards, to the treading of the grape?
For lo! recoiling from thy hurrying feet
The pavement-stones ring out right merrily.”
SPEECH OF AJAX.
SOPH. AJ. 645.
ALL strangest things the multitudinous years
Bring forth, and shadow from us all we know.
Falter alike great oath and steeled resolve;
And none shall say of aught, ‘This may not be.’
Lo! I myself, but yesterday so strong,
As new-dipt steel am weak and all unsexed
By yonder woman: yea I mourn for them,
Widow and orphan, left amid their foes.
But I will journey seaward—where the shore
Lies meadow-fringed—so haply wash away
My sin, and flee that wrath that weighs me down.
And, lighting somewhere on an untrodden way,
I will bury this my lance, this hateful thing,
Deep in some earth-hole where no eye shall see—
Night and Hell keep it in the underworld!
For never to this day, since first I grasped
The gift that Hector gave, my bitterest foe,
Have I reaped aught of honour from the Greeks.
So true that byword in the mouths of men,
“A foeman’s gifts are no gifts, but a curse.”
Wherefore henceforward shall I know that God
Is great; and strive to honour Atreus’ sons.
Princes they are, and should be obeyed. How else?
Do not all terrible and most puissant things
Yet bow to loftier majesties? The Winter,
Who walks forth scattering snows, gives place anon
To fruitage-laden Summer; and the orb
Of weary Night doth in her turn stand by,
And let shine out, with her white steeds, the Day:
Stern tempest-blasts at last sing lullaby
To groaning seas: even the arch-tyrant, Sleep,
Doth loose his slaves, not hold them chained for ever.
And shall not mankind too learn discipline?
_I_ know, of late experience taught, that him
Who is my foe I must but hate as one
Whom I may yet call Friend: and him who loves me
Will I but serve and cherish as a man
Whose love is not abiding. Few be they
Who, reaching Friendship’s port, have there found rest.
But, for these things they shall be well. Go thou,
Lady, within, and there pray that the Gods
May fill unto the full my heart’s desire.
And ye, my mates, do unto me with her
Like honour: bid young Teucer, if he come,
To care for me, but to be _your_ friend still.
For where my way leads, thither I shall go:
Do ye my bidding; haply ye may hear,
Though now is my dark hour, that I have peace.
FROM LUCRETIUS.
BOOK II.
SWEET, when the great sea’s water is stirred to his depths by the
storm-winds,
Standing ashore to descry one afar-off mightily struggling:
Not that a neighbour’s sorrow to you yields blissful enjoyment;
But that the sight hath a sweetness, of ills ourselves are exempt
from.
Sweet ’tis too to behold, on a broad plain mustering, war-hosts
Arm them for some great battle, one’s self unscathed by the danger:—
Yet still happier this:—To possess, impregnably guarded,
Those calm heights of the sages, which have for an origin Wisdom;
Thence to survey our fellows, observe them this way and that way
Wander amidst Life’s paths, poor stragglers seeking a highway:
Watch mind battle with mind, and escutcheon rival escutcheon;
Gaze on that untold strife, which is waged ’neath the sun and the
starlight,
Up as they toil to the surface whereon rest Riches and Empire.
O race born unto trouble! O minds all lacking of eyesight!
’Neath what a vital darkness, amidst how terrible dangers,
Move ye thro’ this thing, Life, this fragment! Fools, that ye hear
not
Nature clamour aloud for the one thing only; that, all pain
Parted and past from the Body, the Mind too bask in a blissful
Dream, all fear of the future and all anxiety over!
So, as regards Man’s Body, a few things only are needful,
(Few, tho’ we sum up all,) to remove all misery from him;
Aye, and to strew in his path such a lib’ral carpet of pleasures,
That scarce Nature herself would at times ask happiness ampler.
Statues of youth and of beauty may not gleam golden around him,
(Each in his right hand bearing a great lamp lustrously burning,
Whence to the midnight revel a light may be furnished always);
Silver may not shine softly, nor gold blaze bright, in his mansion,
Nor to the noise of the tabret his halls gold-cornicèd echo:—
Yet still he, with his fellow, reposed on the velvety greensward,
Near to a rippling stream, by a tall tree canopied over,
Shall, though they lack great riches, enjoy all bodily pleasure.
Chiefliest then, when above them a fair sky smiles, and the young year
Flings with a bounteous hand over each green meadow the wild-flowers:—
Not more quickly depart from his bosom fiery fevers,
Who beneath crimson hangings and pictures cunningly broidered
Tosses about, than from him who must lie in beggarly raiment.
Therefore, since to the Body avail not Riches, avails not
Heraldry’s utmost boast, nor the pomp and the pride of an Empire;
Next shall you own, that the Mind needs likewise nothing of these
things.
Unless—when, peradventure, your armies over the champaign
Spread with a stir and a ferment, and bid War’s image awaken,
Or when with stir and with ferment a fleet sails forth upon Ocean—
Cowed before these brave sights, pale Superstition abandon
Straightway your mind as you gaze, Death seem no longer alarming,
Trouble vacate your bosom, and Peace hold holiday in you.
But, if (again) all this be a vain impossible fiction;
If of a truth men’s fears, and the cares which hourly beset them,
Heed not the jav’lin’s fury, regard not clashing of broadswords;
But all-boldly amongst crowned heads and the rulers of empires
Stalk, not shrinking abashed from the dazzling glare of the red gold,
Not from the pomp of the monarch, who walks forth purple-apparelled:
These things shew that at times we are bankrupt, surely, of Reason;
When too all Man’s life through a great Dark laboureth onward.
For, as a young boy trembles, and in that mystery, Darkness,
Sees all terrible things: so do we too, ev’n in the daylight,
Ofttimes shudder at that, which is not more really alarming
Than boys’ fears, when they waken, and say some danger is o’er them.
So this panic of mind, these clouds which gather around us,
Fly not the bright sunbeam, nor the ivory shafts of the Day-star:
Nature, rightly revealed, and the Reason only, dispel them.
Now, how moving about do the prime material atoms
Shape forth this thing and that thing; and, once shaped, how they
resolve them;
What power says unto each, This must be; how an inherent
Elasticity drives them about Space vagrantly onward;—
I shall unfold: thou simply give all thyself to my teaching.
Matter mingled and massed into indissoluble union
Does not exist. For we see how wastes each separate substance;
So flow piecemeal away, with the length’ning centuries, all things,
Till from our eye by degrees that old self passes, and is not.
Still Universal Nature abides unchanged as aforetime.
Whereof this is the cause. When the atoms part from a substance,
That suffers loss; but another is elsewhere gaining an increase:
So that, as one thing wanes, still a second bursts into blossom,
Soon, in its turn, to be left. Thus draws this Universe always
Gain out of loss; thus live we mortals one on another.
Bourgeons one generation, and one fades. Let but a few years
Pass, and a race has arisen which was not: as in a racecourse,
One hands on to another the burning torch of Existence.
FROM HOMER.
_Il_. I.
SING, O daughter of heaven, of Peleus’ son, of Achilles,
Him whose terrible wrath brought thousand woes on Achaia.
Many a stalwart soul did it hurl untimely to Hades,
Souls of the heroes of old: and their bones lay strown on the
sea-sands,
Prey to the vulture and dog. Yet was Zeus fulfilling a purpose;
Since that far-off day, when in hot strife parted asunder
Atreus’ sceptred son, and the chos’n of heaven, Achilles.
Say then, which of the Gods bid arise up battle between them?
Zeus’s and Leto’s son. With the king was kindled his anger:
Then went sickness abroad, and the people died of the sickness:
For that of Atreus’ son had his priest been lightly entreated,
Chryses, Apollo’s priest. For he came to the ships of Achaia,
Bearing a daughter’s ransom, a sum not easy to number:
And in his hand was the emblem of Him, far-darting Apollo,
High on a sceptre of gold: and he made his prayer to the Grecians;
Chiefly to Atreus’ sons, twin chieftains, ordering armies
“Chiefs sprung of Atreus’ loins; and ye, brazen-greavèd Achaians!
So may the Gods this day, the Olympus-palacèd, grant you
Priam’s city to raze, and return unscathed to your homesteads:
Only my own dear daughter I ask; take ransom and yield her,
Rev’rencing His great name, son of Zeus, far-darting Apollo.”
Then from the host of Achaians arose tumultuous answer:
“Due to the priest is his honour; accept rich ransom and yield her.”
But there was war in the spirit of Atreus’ son, Agamemnon;
Disdainful he dismissed him, a right stern fiat appending:—
“Woe be to thee, old man, if I find thee lingering longer,
Yea or returning again, by the hollow ships of Achaians!
Scarce much then will avail thee the great god’s sceptre and emblem.
Her will I never release. Old age must first come upon her,
In my own home, yea in Argos, afar from the land of her fathers,
Following the loom and attending upon my bed. But avaunt thee!
Go, and provoke not me, that thy way may be haply securer.”
These were the words of the king, and the old man feared and obeyed
him:
Voiceless he went by the shore of the great dull-echoing ocean,
Thither he got him apart, that ancient man; and a long prayer
Prayed to Apollo his Lord, son of golden-ringleted Leto.
“Lord of the silver bow, whose arm girds Chryse and Cilla,—
Cilla, loved of the Gods,—and in might sways Tenedos, hearken!
Oh! if, in days gone by, I have built from floor unto cornice,
Smintheus, a fair shrine for thee; or burned in the flames of the
altar
Fat flesh of bulls and of goats; then do this thing that I ask thee:
Hurl on the Greeks thy shafts, that thy servant’s tears be avengèd!”
So did he pray, and his prayer reached the ears of Phoebus Apollo.
Dark was the soul of the god as he moved from the heights of Olympus,
Shouldering a bow, and a quiver on this side fast and on that side.
Onward in anger he moved. And the arrows, stirred by the motion,
Rattled and rang on his shoulder: he came, as cometh the midnight.
Hard by the ships he stayed him, and loosed one shaft from the
bow-string;
Harshly the stretched string twanged of the bow all silvery-shining;
First fell his wrath on the mules, and the swift-footed hound of the
herdsman;
Afterward smote he the host. With a rankling arrow he smote them
Aye; and the morn and the even were red with the glare of the
corpse-fires.
Nine days over the host sped the shafts of the god: and the tenth
day
Dawned; and Achilles said, “Be a council called of the people.”
(Such thought came to his mind from the goddess, Hera the white-armed,
Hera who loved those Greeks, and who saw them dying around her.)
So when all were collected and ranged in a solemn assembly,
Straightway rose up amidst them and spake swift-footed Achilles:—
“Atreus’ son! it were better, I think this day, that we wandered
Back, re-seeking our homes, (if a warfare _may_ be avoided);
Now when the sword and the plague, these two things, fight with
Achaians.
Come, let us seek out now some priest, some seer amongst us,
Yea or a dreamer of dreams—for a dream too cometh of God’s hand—
Whence we may learn what hath angered in this wise Phoebus Apollo.
Whether mayhap he reprove us of prayer or of oxen unoffered;
Whether, accepting the incense of lambs and of blemishless he-goats,
Yet it be his high will to remove this misery from us.”
Down sat the prince: he had spoken. And uprose to them in answer
Kalchas Thestor’s son, high chief of the host of the augurs.
Well he knew what is present, what will be, and what was aforetime;
He into Ilion’s harbour had led those ships of Achaia,
All by the Power of the Art, which he gained from Phoebus Apollo.
Thus then, kindliest-hearted, arising spake he before them:
“Peleus’ son! Thou demandest, a man heavenfavor’d, an answer
Touching the Great King’s wrath, the afar-off-aiming Apollo:
Therefore I lift up my voice. Swear thou to me, duly digesting
All,—that with right good will, by word and by deed, thou wilt aid me.
Surely the ire will awaken of one who mightily ruleth
Over the Argives all: and upon him wait the Achaians.
Aye is the battle the king’s, when a poor man kindleth his anger:
For, if but this one day he devour his indignation,
Still on the morrow abideth a rage, that its end be accomplished,
Deep in the soul of the king. So bethink thee, wilt thou deliver.”
Then unto him making answer arose swift-footed Achilles:
“Fearing nought, up and open the god’s will, all that is told thee:
For by Apollo’s self, heaven’s favourite, whom thou, Kalchas,
Serving aright, to the armies aloud God-oracles op’nest:
None—while as yet I breathe upon earth, yet walk in the daylight—
Shall, at the hollow ships, lift hand of oppression against thee,
None out of all yon host—not and if thou said’st Agamemnon,
Who now sits in his glory, the topmost flower of the armies.”
Then did the blameless prophet at last wax valiant and answer:
“Lo! He doth not reprove us of prayer or of oxen unoffered;
But for his servant’s sake, the disdained of king Agamemnon,
(In that he loosed not his daughter, inclined not his ear to a
ransom,)—
Therefore the Far-darter sendeth, and yet shall send on us, evil.
Nor shall he stay from the slaughter the hand that is heavy upon you,
Till to her own dear father the bright-eyed maiden is yielded,
No price asked, no ransom; and ships bear hallowèd oxen
Chryse-wards:—then, it may be, will he shew mercy and hear us.”
These words said, sat he down. Then rose in his place and
addressed them
Atreus’ warrior son, Agamemnon king of the nations,
Sore grieved. Fury was working in each dark cell of his bosom,
And in his eye was a glare as a burning fiery furnace:
First to the priest he addressed him, his whole mien boding a
mischief.
“Priest of ill luck! Never heard I of aught good from thee, but
evil.
Still doth the evil thing unto thee seem sweeter of utt’rance;
Leaving the thing which is good all unspoke, all unaccomplished.
Lo! this day to the people thou say’st, God-oracles opening,
What, but that _I_ am the cause why the god’s hand worketh against
them,
For that in sooth I rejected a ransom, aye and a rich one,
Brought for the girl Briseis. I did. For I chose to possess her,
Rather, at home: less favour hath Clytemnestra before me,
Clytemnestra my wife: unto her Briseis is equal,
Equal in form and in stature, in mind and in womanly wisdom.
Still, even thus, am I ready to yield her, so it be better:
Better is saving alive, I hold, than slaying a nation.
Meanwhile deck me a guerdon in her stead, lest of Achaians
I should alone lack honour; an unmeet thing and a shameful.
See all men, that my guerdon, I wot not whither it goeth.”
Then unto him made answer the swift-foot chieftain Achilles:
“O most vaunting of men, most gain-loving, off-spring of Atreus!
How shall the lords of Achaia bestow fresh guerdon upon thee?
Surely we know not yet of a treasure piled in abundance:
That which the sacking of cities hath brought to us, all hath an
owner,
Yea it were all unfit that the host make redistribution.
Yield thou the maid to the god. So threefold surely and fourfold
All we Greeks will requite thee, should that day dawn, when the great
Gods
Grant that of yon proud walls not one stone rest on another.”
* * * * * *