“Why weeps Patroclus, like an infant girl, That prays her mother, by whose side she runs, To take her up; and, clinging to her gown, Impedes her way, and still with tearful eyes Looks in her face, until she take her up? Ev’n as that girl, Patroclus, such art thou, Shedding soft tears: hast thou some tidings brought Touching the gen’ral weal, or me alone? Or have some evil news from Phthia come, Known but to thee? Menoetius, Actor’s son, Yet surely lives; and ’mid his Myrmidons Lives aged Peleus, son of Æacus: Their deaths indeed might well demand our tears: Or weep’st thou for the Greeks, who round their ships By death their former insolence repay? Speak out, that I may know thy cause of grief.” To whom, with bitter groans, Patroclus thus: “O son of Peleus, noblest of the Greeks, Achilles, be not wroth! such weight of woe The Grecian camp oppresses; in their ships They who were late their bravest and their best, Sore wounded all by spear or arrow lie; The valiant son of Tydeus, Diomed, Pierc’d by a shaft, Ulysses by a spear, And Agamemnon’s self; Eurypylus By a sharp arrow through the thigh transfix’d; For these, the large resources of their art The leeches ply, and on their wounds attend; While thou, Achilles, still remain’st unmov’d. Oh, be it never mine to nurse such hate As thou retain’st, inflexibly severe! Who e’er may hope in future days by thee To profit, if thou now forbear to save The Greeks from shame and loss? Unfeeling man! Sure Peleus, horseman brave, was ne’er thy sire, Nor Thetis bore thee; from the cold grey sea And craggy rocks thou hadst thy birth; so hard And stubborn is thy soul. But if the fear Of evil prophesied thyself restrain, Or message by thy Goddess-mother brought From Jove, yet send me forth with all thy force Of Myrmidons, to be the saving light Of Greece; and let me to the battle bear Thy glitt’ring arms, if so the men of Troy, Scar’d by thy likeness, may forsake the field, And breathing-time afford the sons of Greece, Toil-worn; for little pause has yet been theirs. Fresh and unwearied, we may drive with ease To their own city, from our ships and tents, The Trojans, worn and battle-wearied men.”