📔 Iliad

He is a Master of Civility, no less well-bred to his own Sex than courtly to the other.

Of heav'n's undrossy gold the God's array / Refulgent, flash'd intolerable day.

He said: the driver whirls his lengthful thong; The horses fly; the chariot smokes along.

The queen assents, and from the infernal bowers / Invokes the sable subtartarean powers, / And those who rule the inviolable floods, / Whom mortals name the dread Titanian gods.

Their pain soft arts of pharmacy can ease, / Thy breast alone no lenitives appease.

Tlepolemus, the son of Hercules, / Led nine swift vessels through the foamy seas, / From Rhodes, with everlasting sunshine bright, / Jalyssus, Lindus, and Camirus white.

O’er both their marks it flew; till fiercely flung / From Polypœtes’ arm the discus sung: / Far as a swain his whirling sheephook throws, / That distant falls among the grazing cows,

The power ignipotent her word obeys: / Wide o’er the plain he pours the boundless blaze; / At once consumes the dead, and dries the soil / And the shrunk waters in their channel boil.

The corslet his astonish’d breast forsakes: / Loose is each joint; each nerve with horror shakes; / Stupid he stares, and all-assistless stands: / Such is the force of more than mortal hands!

Like furious, rush’d the Myrmidonian crew, / Such their dread strength, and such their deathful view.