or pleasure and for eagerness
To haste to the ship. Yet were his hurrying feet
Stayed by his mother's pleading and her tears
Still in those halls awhile. As some swift horse
Is reined in by his rider, when he strains
Unto the race-course, and he neighs, and champs
The curbing bit, dashing his chest with foam,
And his feet eager for the course are still
Never, his restless hooves are clattering aye;
His mane is a stormy cloud, he tosses high
His head with snortings, and his lord is glad;
So reined his mother back the glorious son
Of battle-stay Achilles, so his feet
Were restless, so the mother's loving pride
Joyed in her son, despite her heart-sick pain.

A thousand times he kissed her, then at last
Left her alone with her own grief and moan
There in her father's halls. As o'er her nest
A swallow in her anguish cries aloud
For her lost nestlings which, mid piteous shrieks,
A fearful serpent hath devoured, and wrung
The loving mother's heart; and now above
That empty cradle spreads her wings, and now
Flies round its porchway fashioned cunningly
Lamenting piteously her little ones:
So for her child Deidameia mourned.
Now on her son's bed did she cast herself,
Crying aloud, against his door-post now
She leaned, and wept: now laid she in her lap
Those childhood's toys yet treasured in her bower,
Wherein his babe-heart joyed long years agone.
She saw a dart there left behind of him,
And kissed it o'er and o'er yea, whatso else
Her weeping eyes beheld that was her son's.

Naught heard he of her moans unutterable,
But was afar, fast striding to the ship.
He seemed, as his feet swiftly bare him on,
Like some all-radiant star; and at his side
With Tydeus' son war-wise Odysseus went,
And with them twenty gallant-hearted men,
Whom Deidameia chose as trustiest
Of all her household, and unto her son
Gave them for henchmen swift to do his will.
And these attended Achilles' valiant son,
As through the city to the ship he sped.
On, with glad laughter, in their midst he strode;
And Thetis and the Nereids joyed thereat.
Yea, glad was even the Raven-haired, the Lord
Of all the sea, beholding that brave son
Of princely Achilles, marking how he longed
For battle. Beardless boy albeit he was,
His prowess and his might were inward spurs
To him. He hasted forth his fatherland
Like to the War-god, when to gory strife