The Iliad of Homer - Get a Free Blog

With this reproach his flying host
he warms:
"Oh stain to honour! oh disgrace to
arms!
Forsake, inglorious, the contended
plain;
This hand unaided shall the war
sustain:
The task be mine this hero's
strength to try,
Who mows whole troops, and
makes an army fly."
He spake: and, speaking, leaps
from off the car:
Patroclus lights, and sternly waits
the war.
As when two vultures on the mountain's
height
Stoop with resounding pinions to
the fight;
They cuff, they tear, they raise a
screaming cry;