ACHILLES

This time the prophecy was clearly shewn:

Troy could not fall without Achilles’ aid.

The leader of the stout Myrmidon host—

Fear-bringing spearmen Zeus had raised from ants—

Put out from Phthia with his fifty ships,

And fair winds bore him to Ilium’s walls.

The lion-hearted hardened into war,

With Hera’s favour, Pallas at his side.

Urged on by battle and its iron rage

He rode, his spear held firm, through hostile ranks.

The shining sea-nymph Thetis could not break

The black thread by the fatal Sisters spun

And sealed by Phoebus, friend to Priam’s house.

No god, but godlike in his mortal strength,

He moved amid them, greater than his kind.

His praise went out through ev’ry peopled land,

Renown grew dim beneath his mother’s grief.

Achilles treads among the countless dead.

They dream of feasts in high Olympus’ courts,

Yet nectar never touches human lips—

That draught is kept for gods, denied to men.

The dismal seat of ghosts begins to shake

As they’re hurled toward the shadowed halls below.

Behind them, on the ravaged Trojan plain,

Their sundered bodies lie in armour torn,

Foes hem them round, athirst to seize the spoil.

He takes the path that runs through glory’s gate

To carve his deathless name.

Clad in the mail the Fire-smith forged for him,

He drives his coursers through the armèd press.

With one sure cast he cleaves their foremost line,

His wrath, unstayed, devours what stands before—

Spurs slaughter on.