Complete Works of Homer

by Homer

  Forth, by the flaming lights, they bend their way,

  And place the couches, and the coverings lay.

  Then he: "Now, father, sleep, but sleep not here;

  Consult thy safety, and forgive my fear,

  Lest any Argive, at this hour awake,

  To ask our counsel, or our orders take,

  Approaching sudden to our open'd tent,

  Perchance behold thee, and our grace prevent.

  Should such report thy honour'd person here,

  The king of men the ransom might defer;

  But say with speed, if aught of thy desire

  Remains unask'd; what time the rites require

  To inter thy Hector? For, so long we stay

  Our slaughtering arm, and bid the hosts obey."

  "If then thy will permit (the monarch said)

  To finish all due honours to the dead,

  This of thy grace accord: to thee are known

  The fears of Ilion, closed within her town;

  And at what distance from our walls aspire

  The hills of Ide, and forests for the fire.

  Nine days to vent our sorrows I request,

  The tenth shall see the funeral and the feast;

  The next, to raise his monument be given;

  The twelfth we war, if war be doom'd by heaven!"

  "This thy request (replied the chief) enjoy:

  Till then our arms suspend the fall of Troy."

  Then gave his hand at parting, to prevent

  The old man's fears, and turn'd within the tent;

  Where fair Briseis, bright in blooming charms,

  Expects her hero with desiring arms.

  But in the porch the king and herald rest;

  Sad dreams of care yet wandering in their breast.

  Now gods and men the gifts of sleep partake;

  Industrious Hermes only was awake,

  The king's return revolving in his mind,

  To pass the ramparts, and the watch to blind.

  The power descending hover'd o'er his head:

  "And sleep'st thou, father! (thus the vision said:)

  Now dost thou sleep, when Hector is restored?

  Nor fear the Grecian foes, or Grecian lord?

  Thy presence here should stern Atrides see,

  Thy still surviving sons may sue for thee;

  May offer all thy treasures yet contain,

  To spare thy age; and offer all in vain."

  Waked with the word the trembling sire arose,

  And raised his friend: the god before him goes:

  He joins the mules, directs them with his hand,

  And moves in silence through the hostile land.

  When now to Xanthus' yellow stream they drove,

  (Xanthus, immortal progeny of Jove,)

  The winged deity forsook their view,

  And in a moment to Olympus flew.

  Now shed Aurora round her saffron ray,

  Sprang through the gates of light, and gave the day:

  Charged with the mournful load, to Ilion go

  The sage and king, majestically slow.

  Cassandra first beholds, from Ilion'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 rush'd 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 woe."

  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 Scaea'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 scatter'd hair:

  Thus wildly wailing, at the gates they lay;

  And there had sigh'd and sorrow'd 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 through 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 sing, alternate flow

  The obedient tears, melodious in their woe.

  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)

  Snatch'd in thy bloom from these desiring eyes!

  Thou to the dismal realms for ever gone!

  And I abandon'd, desolate, alone!

  An only son, once comfort of our pains,

  Sad product now of hapless love, remains!

  Never to manly age that son shall rise,

  Or with increasing graces glad my eyes:

  For Ilion 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 barbarous climes shall go,

  The sad companion of thy mother's woe;

  Driven hence a slave before the victor's sword

  Condemn'd to toil for some inhuman lord:

  Or else some Greek whose father press'd the plain,

  Or son, or brother, by great Hector slain,

  In Hector's blood his vengeance shall enjoy,

  And hurl thee headlong from the towers of Troy.

  For thy stern father never spared a foe:

  Thence all these tears, and all this scene of woe!

  Thence many evils his sad parents bore,

  His parents many, but his consort more.

  Why gav'st thou not to me thy dying hand?

  And why received not I thy last command?

  Some word thou would'st have spoke, which, sadly dear,

  My soul might keep, or utter with a tear;

  Which never, never could be lost in air,

  Fix'd 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 heaven 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 corse was dragg'd 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
r />   Dismiss'd 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 join'd

  Tne mildest manners with the bravest mind,

  Now twice ten years (unhappy years) are o'er

  Since Paris brought me to the Trojan shore,

  (O had I perish'd, ere that form divine

  Seduced this soft, this easy heart of mine!)

  Yet was it ne'er my fate, from thee to find

  A deed ungentle, or a word unkind.

  When others cursed the authoress of their woe,

  Thy pity check'd my sorrows in their flow.

  If some proud brother eyed me with disdain,

  Or scornful sister with her sweeping train,

  Thy gentle accents soften'd all my pain.

  For thee I mourn, and mourn myself in thee,

  The wretched source of all this misery.

  The fate I caused, for ever I bemoan;

  Sad Helen has no friend, now thou art gone!

  Through Troy's wide streets abandon'd shall I roam!

  In Troy deserted, as abhorr'd at home!"

  So spoke the fair, with sorrow-streaming eye.

  Distressful beauty melts each stander-by.

  On all around the infectious sorrow grows;

  But Priam check'd the torrent as it rose:

  "Perform, ye Trojans! what the rites require,

  And fell the forests for a funeral pyre;

  Twelve days, nor foes nor secret ambush dread;

  Achilles grants these honours to the dead."

  FUNERAL OF HECTOR.

  He spoke, and, at his word, the Trojan train

  Their mules and oxen harness to the wain,

  Pour through the gates, and fell'd from Ida's crown,

  Roll back the gather'd forests to the town.

  These toils continue nine succeeding days,

  And high in air a sylvan structure raise.

  But when the tenth fair morn began to shine,

  Forth to the pile was borne the man divine,

  And placed aloft; while all, with streaming eyes,

  Beheld the flames and rolling smokes arise.

  Soon as Aurora, daughter of the dawn,

  With rosy lustre streak'd the dewy lawn,

  Again the mournful crowds surround the pyre,

  And quench with wine the yet remaining fire.

  The snowy bones his friends and brothers place

  (With tears collected) in a golden vase;

  The golden vase in purple palls they roll'd,

  Of softest texture, and inwrought with gold.

  Last o'er the urn the sacred earth they spread,

  And raised the tomb, memorial of the dead.

  (Strong guards and spies, till all the rites were done,

  Watch'd from the rising to the setting sun.)

  All Troy then moves to Priam's court again,

  A solemn, silent, melancholy train:

  Assembled there, from pious toil they rest,

  And sadly shared the last sepulchral feast.

  Such honours Ilion to her hero paid,

  And peaceful slept the mighty Hector's shade.

  CONCLUDING NOTE.

  We have now passed through the Iliad, and seen the anger of Achilles, and the terrible effects of it, at an end, as that only was the subject of the poem, and the nature of epic poetry would not permit our author to proceed to the event of the war, it perhaps may be acceptable to the common reader to give a short account of what happened to Troy and the chief actors in this poem after the conclusion of it.

  I need not mention that Troy was taken soon after the death of Hector by the stratagem of the wooden horse, the particulars of which are described by Virgil in the second book of the Æneid.

  Achilles fell before Troy, by the hand of Paris, by the shot of an arrow in his heel, as Hector had prophesied at his death, lib. xxii.

  The unfortunate Priam was killed by Pyrrhus, the son of Achilles.

  Ajax, after the death of Achilles, had a contest with Ulysses for the armour of Vulcan, but being defeated in his aim, he slew himself through indignation.

  Helen, after the death of Paris, married Deiphobus his brother, and at the taking of Troy betrayed him, in order to reconcile herself to Menelaus her first husband, who received her again into favour.

  Agamemnon at his return was barbarously murdered by Ægysthus, at the instigation of Clytemnestra his wife, who in his absence had dishonoured his bed with Ægysthus.

  Diomed, after the fall of Troy, was expelled his own country, and scarce escaped with his life from his adulterous wife Ægiale; but at last was received by Daunus in Apulia, and shared his kingdom; it is uncertain how he died.

  Nestor lived in peace with his children, in Pylos, his native country.

  Ulysses also, after innumerable troubles by sea and land, at last returned in safety to Ithaca, which is the subject of Homer's Odyssey.

  For what remains, I beg to be excused from the ceremonies of taking leave at the end of my work, and from embarrassing myself, or others, with any defences or apologies about it. But instead of endeavouring to raise a vain monument to myself, of the merits or difficulties of it (which must be left to the world, to truth, and to posterity), let me leave behind me a memorial of my friendship with one of the most valuable of men, as well as finest writers, of my age and country, one who has tried, and knows by his own experience, how hard an undertaking it is to do justice to Homer, and one whom (I am sure) sincerely rejoices with me at the period of my labours. To him, therefore, having brought this long work to a conclusion, I desire to dedicate it, and to have the honour and satisfaction of placing together, in this manner, the names of Mr. CONGREVE, and of

  March 25, 1720

  A. POPE

  Ton theon de eupoiia — to mae epi pleon me procophai en poiaetikn kai allois epitaeoeimasi en ois isos a kateschethaen, ei aesthomaen emautan euodos proionta.

  THE ILIAD – Cowper’s Translation

  William Cowper’s translation of The Iliad is composed in Miltonic blank verse. This 1791 edition is more highly regarded for its fidelity to the Greek than either the Chapman or the Pope versions, as stated by Cowper himself in his preface, “I have omitted nothing; I have invented nothing”.

  Wiliiam Cowper

  THE

  ILIAD OF HOMER,

  TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH BLANK VERSE

  BY WILLIAM COWPER.

  COWPER’S ILIAD

  PREFACE.

  PREFACE

  PREFACE

  ADVERTISEMENT TO SOUTHEY'S EDITION

  EDITOR'S NOTE.

  BOOK I.

  BOOK II.

  BOOK III.

  BOOK IV.

  BOOK V.

  BOOK VI.

  BOOK VII.

  BOOK VIII.

  BOOK IX.

  BOOK X.

  BOOK XI.

  BOOK XII.

  BOOK XIII.

  BOOK XIV.

  BOOK XV.

  BOOK XVI.

  BOOK XVII.

  BOOK XVIII.

  BOOK XIX.

  BOOK XX.

  BOOK XXI.

  BOOK XXII.

  BOOK XXIII.

  BOOK XXIV.

  PREFACE.

  Whether a translation of Homer may be best executed in blank verse or in rhyme, is a question in the decision of which no man can find difficulty, who has ever duly considered what translation ought to be, or who is in any degree practically acquainted with those very different kinds of versification. I will venture to assert that a just translation of any ancient poet in rhyme, is impossible. No human ingenuity can be equal to the task of closing every couplet with sounds homotonous, expressing at the same time the full sense, and only the full sense of his orig
inal. The translator's ingenuity, indeed, in this case becomes itself a snare, and the readier he is at invention and expedient, the more likely he is to be betrayed into the widest departures from the guide whom he professes to follow. Hence it has happened, that although the public have long been in possession of an English Homer by a poet whose writings have done immortal honor to his country, the demand of a new one, and especially in blank verse, has been repeatedly and loudly made by some of the best judges and ablest writers of the present day.

  I have no contest with my predecessor. None is supposable between performers on different instruments. Mr. Pope has surmounted all difficulties in his version of Homer that it was possible to surmount in rhyme. But he was fettered, and his fetters were his choice. Accustomed always to rhyme, he had formed to himself an ear which probably could not be much gratified by verse that wanted it, and determined to encounter even impossibilities, rather than abandon a mode of writing in which he had excelled every body, for the sake of another to which, unexercised in it as he was, he must have felt strong objections.

  I number myself among the warmest admirers of Mr. Pope as an original writer, and I allow him all the merit he can justly claim as the translator of this chief of poets. He has given us the Tale of Troy divine in smooth verse, generally in correct and elegant language, and in diction often highly poetical. But his deviations are so many, occasioned chiefly by the cause already mentioned, that, much as he has done, and valuable as his work is on some accounts, it was yet in the humble province of a translator that I thought it possible even for me to fellow him with some advantage.

  That he has sometimes altogether suppressed the sense of his author, and has not seldom intermingled his own ideas with it, is a remark which, on viii this occasion, nothing but necessity should have extorted from me. But we differ sometimes so widely in our matter, that unless this remark, invidious as it seems, be premised, I know not how to obviate a suspicion, on the one hand, of careless oversight, or of factitious embellishment on the other. On this head, therefore, the English reader is to be admonished, that the matter found in me, whether he like it or not, is found also in Homer, and that the matter not found in me, how much soever he may admire it, is found only in Mr. Pope. I have omitted nothing; I have invented nothing.

  There is indisputably a wide difference between the case of an original writer in rhyme and a translator. In an original work the author is free; if the rhyme be of difficult attainment, and he cannot find it in one direction, he is at liberty to seek it in another; the matter that will not accommodate itself to his occasions he may discard, adopting such as will. But in a translation no such option is allowable; the sense of the author is required, and we do not surrender it willingly even to the plea of necessity. Fidelity is indeed of the very essence of translation, and the term itself implies it. For which reason, if we suppress the sense of our original, and force into its place our own, we may call our work an imitation, if we please, or perhaps a paraphrase, but it is no longer the same author only in a different dress, and therefore it is not translation. Should a painter, professing to draw the likeness of a beautiful woman, give her more or fewer features than belong to her, and a general cast of countenance of his own invention, he might be said to have produced a jeu d'esprit, a curiosity perhaps in its way, but by no means the lady in question.