And dead thou rulest a king in these abodes.’


“‘Talk not of ruling in this dolorous gloom,

Nor think vain words (he cried) can ease my doom.

Rather I’d choose laboriously to bear

A weight of woes, and breathe the vital air,

A slave to some poor hind that toils for bread,

Than reign the sceptred monarch of the dead.

But say, if in my steps my son proceeds,

And emulates his godlike father’s deeds?

If at the clash of arms, and shout of foes,

Swells his bold heart, his bosom nobly glows?

Say if my sire, the reverend Peleus, reigns,

Great in his Phthia, and his throne maintains;

Or, weak and old, my youthful arm demands,

To fix the sceptre steadfast in his hands?

O might the lamp of life rekindled burn,

And death release me from the silent urn!

This arm, that thunder’d o’er the Phrygian plain,

And swell’d the ground with mountains of the slain,

Should vindicate my injured father’s fame,

Crush the proud rebel, and assert his claim.’


“‘Illustrious shade (I cried), of Peleus’ fates

No circumstance the voice of Fame relates:

But hear with pleased attention the renown,

The wars and wisdom of thy gallant son.

With me from Scyros to the field of fame

Radiant in arms the blooming hero came.

When Greece assembled all her hundred states,

To ripen counsels, and decide debates,

Heavens! how he charm’d us with a flow of sense,

And won the heart with manly eloquence!

He first was seen of all the peers to rise,

The third in wisdom, where they all were wise!

But when, to try the fortune of the day,

Host moved toward host in terrible array,

Before the van, impatient for the fight,

With martial port he strode, and stern delight:

Heaps strew’d on heaps beneath his falchion groan’d,

And monuments of dead deform’d the ground.

The time would fail should I in order tell

What foes were vanquish’d, and what numbers fell:

How, lost through love, Eurypylus was slain,

And round him bled his bold Cetaean train.