But casts them from Olympus down to earth.
This way and that they are wafted, as it were
By gusts of wind. The good man oft is whelmed
In suffering: wealth undeserved is heaped
On the vile person. Blind is each man's life;
Therefore he never walketh surely; oft
He stumbleth: ever devious is his path,
Now sloping down to sorrow, mounting now
To bliss. All-happy is no living man
From the beginning to the end, but still
The good and evil clash. Our life is short;
Beseems not then in grief to live. Hope on,
Still hope for better days: chain not to woe
Thine heart. There is a saying among men
That to the heavens unperishing mount the souls
Of good men, and to nether darkness sink
Souls of the wicked. Both to God and man
Dear was thy brother, good to brother-men,
And son of an Immortal. Sure am I
That to the company of Gods shall he
Ascend, by intercession of thy sire."
Then raised he that reluctant mourner up
With comfortable words. From that dark grave
He drew him, backward gazing oft with groans.
To the ships they came, where Greeks and Trojan men
Had bitter travail of rekindled war.
Eurypylus there, in dauntless spirit like
The War-god, with mad-raging spear and hands
Resistless, smote down hosts of foes: the earth
Was clogged with dead men slain on either side.
On strode he midst the corpses, awelessly
He fought, with blood-bespattered hands and feet;
Never a moment from grim strife he ceased.
Peneleos the mighty-hearted came
Against him in the pitiless fray: he fell
Before Eurypylus' spear: yea, many more
Fell round him. Ceased not those destroying hands,
But wrathful on the Argives still he pressed,
As when of old on Pholoe's long-ridged heights
Upon the Centaurs terrible Hercules rushed
Storming in might, and slew them, passing-swift
And strong and battle-cunning though they were;
So rushed he on, so smote he down the array,
One after other, of the Danaan spears.
Heaps upon heaps, here, there, in throngs they fell
Strewn in the dust. As when a river in flood
Comes thundering down, banks crumble on either side
To drifting sand: on seaward rolls the surge
Tossing wild crests, while cliffs on every hand
Ring crashing echoes, as their brows break down
Beneath long-leaping roaring waterfalls,
And dikes are swept away; so fell in dust
The war-famed Argives by Eurypylus slain,
Such as h
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