Achilles in Orcus

FROM thy translucent waves, great Thetis, rise !
Mother divine, hear, and take back the gift
Thou gavest me of valor and renown,
And then seek Zeus, but not with loosened zone
For dalliance ; entreat him to restore
Me, Achilles, to the earth, to the black earth,1
The nourisher of men, not these pale shades,
Whose shapes have learned the presage of thy doom ;
They flit between me and the wind-swept plain
Of Troy, the banners over Ilion’s walls,
The zenith of my prowess, and my fate.
Give me again the breath of life, not death.
Would I could tarry in the timbered tent,
As when I wept Patroclus, when, by night,
Old Priam crept, kissing my knees with tears
For Hector’s corse, the hero I laid low.
My panoply was like the gleam of fire
When in the dust I dragged him at my wheels,
My heart was iron, — he despoiled my friend.
Cast on these borders of eternal gloom,
Now comes Odysseus with his wandering crew ;
He pours libations in the deep-dug trench,
While airy forms in multitudes press near,
And listen to the echoes of my praise.
His consolation vain, he bails me, “ Prince ! ”
Vain is bis speech: “ No man before thy time,
Achilles, lived more honored ; here thou art
Supreme, the ruler in these dread abodes.”
Speak not so easily to me of death,
Great Odysseus! Rather would I be
The meanest hind, and bring the bleating lambs
From down the grassy hills, or with a goad
To prod the hungry swine in beechen woods.
Than over the departed to bear sway,
Then from the clouds to note the warning cry
Of the harsh crane; to see the Pleiades rise,
The vine and fig-tree shoot, the olive bud ; To hear the chirping swallows in the dawn,
The thieving cuckoo laughing in the leaves !
So, may Achilles leave his palace gate,
And later heroes strike Achilles’ lyre !