The Iliad: Book 18

Sheltered under his curving, beaked ships he found him,
foreboding, deep down, all that had come to pass.

And the women he and Patroclus carried off as captives
caught the grief in their hearts and keened and wailed

Fair-Isle and shadowy Cavern, Mist and Spindrift,
ocean nymphs of the glances pooling deep and dark,
Race-with-the-Waves and Headlands' Hope and Safe Haven,
Glimmer of Honey, Suave,-and-Soothing, Whirlpool, Brilliance

Bounty and First Light and Speeder of Ships and buoyant Power,
Welcome Home and Bather of Meadows and Master's Lovely Consort,
Gift of the Sea, Eyes of the World and the famous milk-white Calm
and Truth and Never-Wrong and the queen who rules the tides in beauty

And once they reached
the fertile land of Troy they all streamed ashore,
row on row in a long cortege, the sea-nymphs
filing up where the Myrmidon ships lay hauled

But now, for the moment, let me seize great glory!—
and drive some woman of Troy or deep-breasted Dardan
to claw with both hands at her tender cheeks and wipe away
her burning tears as the sobs come choking from her throat—
they'll learn that I refrained from war a good long time!

Flashing Hector's far in the lead, wild to drag it off,
furious to lop the head from its soft, tender neck
and stake it high on the city's palisade.

Time was when the world would talk of Priam's Troy
as the city rich in gold and rich in bronze—but now
our houses are stripped of all their sumptuous treasures

The god of war is impartial:
he hands out death to the man who hands out death.

The fire lapped at the vessel's belly, the water warmed
and soon as it reached the boil in the glowing bronze
they bathed and anointed the body sleek with olive oil,
closed each wound with a soothing, seasoned unguent

The fire lapped at the vessel's belly, the water warmed
and soon as it reached the boil in the glowing bronze
they bathed and anointed the body sleek with olive oil,
closed each wound with a soothing, seasoned unguent
and then they laid Patroclus on his bier…
covered him head to foot in a thin light sheet
and over his body spread the white linen shroud.

Even a mortal man will act to help a friend,
condemned as a mortal always is to death
and hardly endowed with wisdom deep as ours.

There she found him, sweating, wheeling round his bellows,
pressing the work on twenty three-legged cauldrons

And the bellows, all twenty, blew on the crucibles,
breathing with all degrees of shooting, fiery heat

And the bellows, all twenty, blew on the crucibles,
breathing with all degrees of shooting, fiery heat
a blast for the heavy work,
a quick breath for the light, all precisely gauged
to the god of fire's wish and the pace of the work in hand.

And first Hephaestus makes a great and massive shield,
blazoning well-wrought emblems all across its surface

One declaimed in public, vowing payment in full—
the other spurned him, he would not take a thing—
so both men pressed for a judge to cut the knot.

And he forged a fallow field, broad rich plowland
tilled for the third time

And he forged a fallow field, broad rich plowland
tilled for the third time

And he forged a king's estate where harvesters labored,
reaping the ripe grain, swinging their whetted scythes.

Some stalks fell in line with the reapers, row on row,
and others the sheaf-binders girded round with ropes

Some stalks fell in line with the reapers, row on row,
and others the sheaf-binders girded round with ropes

And one lone footpath led toward the vineyard
and down it the pickers ran
whenever they went to strip the grapes at vintage

And now they would run in rings on their skilled feet,
nimbly, quick as a crouching potter spins his wheel,
palming it smoothly, giving it practice twirls
to see it run, and now they would run in rows,
in rows crisscrossing rows—rapturous dancing.

And once the god had made that great and massive shield
he made Achilles a breastplate brighter than gleaming fire,
he made him a sturdy helmet to fit the fighter's temples,
beautiful, burnished work, and raised its golden crest
and made him greaves of flexing, pliant tin.