His rage, and offer’d oft his naked side:
At length, ‘Now, monster, in thy turn,’ he cried,
‘Try thou the strength of Caeneus:’ 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 Monichus began:
‘Oh shame, a nation conquer’d 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:
Nor goddess-born, nor of Ixion’s seed
We seem, (a lover built for Juno’s bed,)
Master’d 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 shad
And spreading groves were naked mountains made.
Press’d with the burden, Caeneus 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 Idaean grove:
Doubtful his death: he suffocated seem’d
To most; but otherwise our Nopsus deem’d;
Who said he saw a yellow bird arise
From out the piles, and cleave the liquid skies:
I saw it too, with golden feathers bright,
Nor ere before beheld so strange a sight:
Whom Mopsus viewing, as it soar’d around
Our troop, and heard the pinion’s rattling sound
‘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 push’d the foe; and forced to shameful flight;
Part fell, and part escaped by favour of the night.”
Fate of Periclymenos
Periclymenos, the brother of Nestor, is endowed by Neptune with the power of assuming whatever shape he pleases—In the form of an eagle he assaults Hercules, who mortally wounds him with an arrow.
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
Sigh’d ere he spoke, then made this proud defence:
“My former woes, in long oblivion drown’d,
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 fill’d the world, and reach’d 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, levell’d to the ground
Messenia’s towers; nor better fortune found
Elis and Pylos: 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 perish’d: I alone survived:
The rest were easy conquest: but the fate
Of Periclymenos is wondrous to relate:
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:
Vanquish’d on earth, at length he soar’d above,
Changed to the bird that bears the bolt of Jove.
The new-dissembled eagle, now endued
With beak and pounces, Hercules pursued,
And cuff’d his manly cheeks, and tore his face,
Then safe retired, and tower’d in empty space.
Alcides bore not long his flying foe,
But bending his inevitable bow,
Reach’d him in air, suspended as he stood,
And in his pinion fix’d the feather’d wood.
Light was the wound; but in the sinew hung
The point, and his disabled wing unstrung.
He wheel’d in air, and stretch’d his vans in vain;
His vans no longer could his flight sustain;
For while one gather’d wind, one unsupplied
Hung drooping down, nor poised his other side.
He fell: the shaft that slightly was impress’d,
Now from his heavy fall, with weight increased,
Drove through his neck aslant; he spurns the ground,
And the soul issues through the windpipe’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 oppress’d,
They rise from table, and withdraw to rest.
Death of Achilles
Achilles, having fallen a sacrifice to the hostility of Apollo and the shafts of Paris, Ajax and Ulysses advance their claims to the armour of the deceased hero.
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
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