Glaucus be bold; thy task be first to dare
The glorious dangers of destructive war.
To lead my troops, to combat at their head,
Incite the living, and supply the dead.

Tell them, I charged them with my latest breath
Not unrevenged to bear Sarpedon's death.
What grief, what shame must Glaucus undergo,
If these spoiled arms adorn a Grecian foe!
Then as a friend, and as a warrior fight;
Defend my body, conquer in my right;
That, taught by great examples, all may try
Like thee to vanquish, or like me to die.

He ceased; the fates suppressed his labouring breath,

And his eyes darkened with the shades of death.

The insulting victor in disdain bestrode

The prostrate prince, and on his bosom trode.
All impotent of aid, transfixed with grief,
Unhappy Glaucus heard the dying chief.
First to the fight his native troops he warms,
Then loudly calls on Troy's vindictive arms.

He spoke each leader in his grief partook,
Troy, at the loss, though all her legions shook.
Transfixed with deep regret, they view overthrown,
At once his country's pillar and their own,
A chief who led to Troy's beleaguered wall
A host of heroes, and outshone them all.
Fired they rush on; first Hector seeks the foes,
And with superior vengeance greatly glows.

Now great Sarpedon on the sandy shore,
His heavenly face deformed with dust and gore,
And struck with darts by warring heroes shed,
Lies undistinguish'd from the common dead.
His long disputed corse the chiefs inclose,
On ev'ry side the busy combat grows.

Then, nor before, the hardy Lycians fled,
And left their monarch with the common dead;
Around, in heaps on heaps, a dreadful wall
Of carnage rises as the heroes fall.

(So Jove decreed !) at length the Greeks obtain
The prize contested, and despoil the slain,
The radiant arms are by Patroclus borne,
Patroclus' ships the glorious spoils adorn.

Then thus to Phoebus in the realms above,
Spoke from his throne the cloud-compelling Jove.

Descend, my Phoebus! on the Phyrgian plain,
And from the fight convey Sarpedon slain ;
Then bathe his body in the chrystal flood,
With dust dishonored, and deformed with blood:
O'er all his limbs ambrosial odours shed,
And with celestial robes adorn the dead.

Those rites discharged, his sacred corse bequeath
To the soft arms of silent Sleep and Death:
They to his friends the mournful charge shall bear,
His friends a tomb and pyramid shall rear ;
What honours mortals after death receive,
Those unavailing honours we may give !
Apollo bows, and from mount Ida's height,
Swift to the field precipitates his flight;
Thence from the war the breathless hero bore,
Veiled in a cloud to silver Simois' shore e;
There bathed his honourable wounds, and drest,
His manly members in the immortal vest;
And with perfumes of sweet ambrosial dews,
Restores his freshness and his form renews.
Then Sleep and Death, two twins of winged race,
Of matchless swiftness but of silent pace,
Received Sarpedon, at the gods command,
And in a moment reach'd the Lycian land;
The corse amidst his weeping friends they laid,
Where endless honours wait the sacred shade."

The insulting victor trod on his prostrate foe. This horribly revengeful spirit gives a revolting idea of savage warfare. Christianity has taught men a more merciful mode of treating fallen enemies.

REVENGE OF ACHILLES.

Hector killed Patroclus, the beloved friend of Achilles. Achilles felt unbounded fury at this act, and resolves upon the death of Hector. Upon this event, which Achilles accomplishes, the implacable vengeance of his heart is shocking—he refuses funeral rites to the dead, and drags his corpse in the most outrageous manner round the monument of Patroclus.

"Then his fell soul a thought of vengeance bred,
(unworthy of himself, and of the dead,)

The nervous ancles bored, his feet he bound
With thongs inserted through the double wound;
These fixed up high behind the rolling wain,
His graceful head was trailed along the plain.
Proud on his car the insulting victor stood,
And bore aloft his arms distilling blood.
He smites the steeds; the rapid chariot flies;
The sudden clouds of circling dust arise.
Now lost is all that formidable air;

The face divine, and long descending hair,
Purple the ground, and streak the sable sand;
Deformed, dishonoured, in his native land!
Given to the rage of an insulting throng!
And, in his parents' sight, now dragged along!"

FUNERAL OF HECTOR.

Achilles, after offering these indignities to the remains of Sector, retains the body. Priam, king of Troy, the unfortunate father of Hector, entreats, Achilles to restore the corpse, and though he had sworn to refuse, his obdurate heart at length yields to the pleading of humanity, and he permits the afflicted Priam to pay the last honours to his son.

"Now shed Aurora round her saffron ray,
Sprung thro' the gates of light, and gave the day:
Charged with their mournful load, to Ilion go
The sage and king, majestically slow.
Cassandra first beholds, from llion's spire,
The sad procession of her hoary sire.

Then, as the pensive pomp advanced more near,
Her breathless brother stretched upon the bier;
A shower of tears o'erflows her beauteous eyes,
Alarming thus all Ilion with her cries.

Turn here your steps, and here your eyes employ,
Ye wretched daughters, and ye sons of Troy !
If e'er ye rushed in crowds, with vast delight,
To hail your hero glorious from the fight;
Now meet him dead, and let your sorrows flow!
Your common triumph, and your common wo.'

In thronging crowds they issue to the plains,
Nor man, nor woman in the walls remains,

In every face the self-same grief is shown,
And Troy sends forth one universal groan.
At Sca's gates they meet the mourning wain,
Hang on the wheels, and grovel round the slain.
The wife and mother, frantic with despair,
Kiss his pale cheek, and rend their scattered hair ;
Thus wildly wailing, at the gates they lay,
And there had sighed and sorrowed out the day;
But godlike Priam from the chariot rose;
Forbear he cried this violence of woes;
First to the palace let the car proceed,
Then pour your boundless sorrows o'er the dead."
The waves of people at his word divide,
Slow rolls the chariot thro' the following tide;
Even to the palace the sad pomp they wait:
They weep, and place him on the bed of state.
A melancholy choir attend around,

With plaintive sighs, and music's solemn sound:
Alternately they sung, alternate flow

The obedient tears, melodious in their wo.
While deeper sorrows groan from each full heart,
And nature speaks at every pause of art.

First to the corse the weeping consort flew; Around his neck her milk-white arms she threw, 'And, oh my Hector! oh my lord!' she cries, 'Snatched in thy bloom from these desiring eyes! Thou to the dismal realms for ever gone!

And I abandoned, desolate, alone!
An only son, once comfort of our pains,
Sad product now of hapless love remains t
Never to manly age that son shall rise,
Or with increasing graces glad my eyes:
For Hion now her great defender slain
Shall sink a smoking ruin on the plain.
Who now protects her wives with guardian care!
Who saves her infants from the rage of war?
Now hostile fleets must waft those infants o'er,
Those wives must wait them to a foreign shore !
'Thou too, my son? to barb'rous climes shalt go,
The sad companion of thy mother's wo:

Driven hence a slave before the victor's sword;
Condemned to toil for some inhuman lord,
Or else some Greek whose father prest the plain,
Or son, or brother, by great Hector slain,

In Hector's blood his vengeance shall enjoy,
And hurl thee headlong from the tow'rs of Troy.
For thy stern father never spared a foe;

Thence all these tears, and all this scene of wo!
Thence many evils his sad parents bore,
His parents many, but his consort more-
Why gavest thou not to me thy dying hand?
And why received not I thy last command?
Some word thou wouldest have spoke, which sadly
dear

My soul might keep, or utter with a tear;
Which never, never, could be lost in air,
Fixed in my heart, and oft repeated there!'

Thus to her weeping maids she makes her moan;
Her weeping handmaids echo groan for groan.
'The mournful mother next sustains her part.
O thou, the best, the dearest to my heart!
Of all my race thou most by heav'n approved,
And by the immortals even in death beloved!
While all my other sons in barbarous bands,
Achilles bound, and sold to foreign lands,
This felt no chains, but went a glorious ghost
Free, and a hero to the Stygian coast,
Sentenced, 'tis true, by his inhuman doom,
Thy noble corpse was dragged around the tomb,
(The tomb of him thy warlike arm had slain,)
Ungenerous insult, impotent and vain!
Yet glow'st thou fresh with every living grace,
No mark of pain, or violence of face;
Rosy and fair! as Phoebus' silver bow
Dismissed thee gently to the shades below.'
Thus spoke the dame, and melted into tears.
Sad Helen next in pomp of grief appears :
Fast from the shining sluices of her eyes
Fall the round crystal drops, while thus she cries.
'Ah dearest friend! in whom the gods had joined
The mildest manners with the bravest mind;
Now twice ten years (unhappy years) are o'er,
Since Paris brought me the Trojan shore ;
Yet was it ne'er my fate, from thee to find
A deed ungentle, or a word unkind :
When others curst the auth'ress of their wo,
Thy pity checked my sorrows in their flow;