Apply for service; day by day Seek honest work for honest pay, Without a fear by any toil The over-cleanly hand to soil: Secure in safety to return, And every pettiness unlearn; And unimpaired still find anew My own and better self in you. * * * * * O ship, ship, ship, That travellest over the sea, What are the tidings, I pray thee, Thou bearest hither to me? Are they tidings of comfort and joy, That shall make me seem to see The sweet lips softly moving And whispering love to me? Or are they of trouble and grief, Estrangement, sorrow, and doubt, To turn into torture my hopes, And drive me from Paradise out? O ship, ship, ship, That comest over the sea, Whatever it be thou bringest, Come quickly with it to me. 1853 ESSAYS IN CLASSICAL METRES. _TRANSLATIONS OF ILIAD._ (I. 1-32.) Goddess, the anger sing of the Pelean Achilles, Fatal beginning of griefs unnumbered to the Achæans; Many valiant souls untimely it hurried to Hades, And the heroes left themselves of dogs to be eaten And of ravenous birds—till Zeus’s plan was accomplished— From the day when first contention arose to dissever Atrides the King and the godlike hero Achilles. What divinity thus incited them to contention?— Zeus and Leto’s son; who, in anger with Agamemnon, Sent a deadly disease on the host, destroying the people, On account of the wrong the King to his worshipper offered, Chryses, who had come to the hollow ships of Achaia, To recover his daughter, with gifts of costly redemption, Carrying in his hands the wreaths of the archer Apollo Set on a golden staff—beseeching all the Achæans, And the Atridæ in chief, the two in command of the nations: ‘Ye, Atreus’ sons, and other well-greaved Achaïan heroes, May the gods, who live in Olympian houses, accord you Capture of Priam’s town and safe to return to Achaia, But liberate to me my child and take the redemption— Fearing Zeus’s son, the far-death-dealing Apollo.’ Then the Achæans all with acclamation assented, Honour to show to the priest, and take the costly redemption; Only to Atrides Agamemnon it was unpleasing, Sternly who dismissed him with contumelious answer: ‘Old man, let me not, by the hollow ships of Achaia Lingering find you now, or henceforth ever appearing, Lest to defend you fail the staff and wreaths of Apollo. Her do I not release until old age come upon her, In my house in the land of Argos, far from her country, Stepping at the loom and in the chamber attending. Go, and trouble me not, that your return be the safer.’ (I. 121-218.)