Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE ILIAD: BOOK 12. THE WALL, by HOMER


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THE ILIAD: BOOK 12. THE WALL, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: So was menoetius' valiant son employed
Last Line: With limpid course, and pleasant as before.
Subject(s): Mythology - Classical; Trojan War


SO was Menoetius' valiant son employ'd
Healing Eurypylus. The Greeks, meantime,
And Trojans with tumultuous fury fought.
Nor was the foss ordain'd long time to exclude
The host of Troy, nor yet the rampart built
Beside it for protection of the fleet;
For hecatomb the Greeks had offer'd none,
Nor prayer to heaven, that it might keep secure
Their ships with all their spoils. The mighty work
As in defiance of the Immortal Powers
Had ris'n, and could not therefore long endure.
While Hector lived, and while Achilles held
His wrathful purpose; while the city yet
Of royal Priam was unsack'd, -- so long
The massy structure stood. But when the best
And bravest of the Trojan host were slain,
And of the Grecian heroes, some had fallen
And some survived; when Priam's towers had blazed
In the tenth year, and to their native shores
The Grecians with their ships, at length, return'd --,
Then Neptune, with Apollo leagued, devised
Its ruin; every river that descends
From the Idaean heights into the sea
They brought against it, gathering all their force,
Rhesus, Caresus, Rhodius, the wide-branch'd
Heptaporus, AEsepus, Granicus,
Scamander's sacred current, and thy stream
Simois, whose banks with helmets and with shields
Were strew'd, and Chiefs of origin divine;
All these with refluent course Apollo drove
Nine days against the rampart, and Jove rain'd
Incessant, that the Grecian wall wave-whelm'd
Through all its length might sudden disappear.
Neptune with his tridental mace, himself,
Led them, and beam and buttress to the flood
Consigning, laid by the laborious Greeks,
Swept the foundation, and the level bank
Of the swift-rolling Hellespont restored.
The structure thus effaced, the spacious beach
He spread with sand as at the first; then bade
Subside the streams, and in their channels wind
With limpid course, and pleasant as before.





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