But when the powers descending swell’d the fight, Then tumult rose: fierce rage and pale affright Varied each face: then Discord sounds alarms, Earth echoes, and the nations rush to arms. Now through the trembling shores Minerva calls, And now she thunders from the Grecian walls. Mars hovering o’er his Troy, his terror shrouds In gloomy tempests, and a night of clouds: Now through each Trojan heart he fury pours With voice divine, from Ilion’s topmost towers: Now shouts to Simois, from her beauteous hill; The mountain shook, the rapid stream stood still. Above, the sire of gods his thunder rolls, And peals on peals redoubled rend the poles. Beneath, stern Neptune shakes the solid ground; The forests wave, the mountains nod around; Through all their summits tremble Ida’s woods, And from their sources boil her hundred floods. Troy’s turrets totter on the rocking plain, And the toss’d navies beat the heaving main. Deep in the dismal regions of the dead,[260] The infernal monarch rear’d his horrid head, Leap’d from his throne, lest Neptune’s arm should lay His dark dominions open to the day, And pour in light on Pluto’s drear abodes, Abhorr’d by men, and dreadful even to gods.[261] [Illustration: ] THE GODS DESCENDING TO BATTLE Such war the immortals wage; such horrors rend The world’s vast concave, when the gods contend. First silver-shafted Phœbus took the plain Against blue Neptune, monarch of the main. The god of arms his giant bulk display’d, Opposed to Pallas, war’s triumphant maid. Against Latona march’d the son of May. The quiver’d Dian, sister of the day, (Her golden arrows sounding at her side,) Saturnia, majesty of heaven, defied. With fiery Vulcan last in battle stands The sacred flood that rolls on golden sands; Xanthus his name with those of heavenly birth, But called Scamander by the sons of earth. While thus the gods in various league engage, Achilles glow’d with more than mortal rage: Hector he sought; in search of Hector turn’d His eyes around, for Hector only burn’d; And burst like lightning through the ranks, and vow’d To glut the god of battles with his blood. Æneas was the first who dared to stay; Apollo wedged him in the warrior’s way, But swell’d his bosom with undaunted might, Half-forced and half-persuaded to the fight. Like young Lycaon, of the royal line, In voice and aspect, seem’d the power divine; And bade the chief reflect, how late with scorn In distant threats he braved the goddess-born.