heart
and in my thought, The day will come when Ilios the holy Shall lie in
heaps, and Priam, and the folk Of ashen-speared Priam, perish all. But
yet no woe to come to Trojan men, Nor even to Hecabe, nor Priam king,
Nor to my brothers, who shall roll in dust, Many and fair, beneath the
strokes of foes, So moves me, as doth thine, when thou shalt go Weeping,
led off by some brass-harnessed Greek, Robbed of the daylight of thy
liberty, To weave in Argos at another's loom, Or bear the water of
Messeis home, Or Hypereia, with unseemly toils, While heavy doom
constrains thee, and perchance The folk may say, who see thy tears
run down, "This was the wife of Hector, best in fight At Ilium, of
horse-taming Trojan men." So will they say perchance; while unto thee
Now grief will come, for such a husband's loss, Who might have warded
off the day of thrall. But may the soil be heaped above my corpse Before
I hear thy shriek and see thy shame!' He spoke, and stretched his arms
to take the child, But back the child upon his nurse's breast Shrank
crying, frightened at his father's looks. Fearing the brass and crest of
horse's hair Which waved above the helmet terribly. Then out that father
dear and mother laughed, And glorious Hector took the helmet off, And
laid it gleaming on the ground, and kissed His darling child, and danced
him in his arm; And spoke in prayer to Zeus, and all the gods 'Zeu,
and ye other gods, oh grant that this My child, like me, may grow the
champion here As good in strength, and rule with might in Troy That men
may say, "The boy is better far Than was his sire," when he returns
from war, Bearing a gory harness, having slain A foeman, and his mothers
heart rejoice. Thus saying, on the hands of his dear wife He laid the
child; and she received him back In fragrant bosom, smiling through her
tears.

[Footnote: The above lines are not meant as a 'translation,' but as an
humble attempt to give the literal sense in some sort of metre. It would
be an act of arrogance even to aim at success where Pope and Chapman
failed. It is simply, I believe, impossible to render Homer into English
verse; because, for one reason among many, it is impossible to preserve
the pomp of sound, which invests with grandeur his most common words.
How can any skill represent the rhythm of Homeric Greek in a language
which--to take the first verse which comes to hand--transforms 'boos
megaloio boeien,' into 'great ox's hide'?]

'Such is t