Heaved on the bounding billows danced the dead, Floating 'midst scatter'd arms; while casques of gold And turn'd-up bucklers glitter'd as they roll'd. High o'er the surging tide, by leaps and bounds, He wades, and mounts; the parted wave resounds. Not a whole river stops the hero's course, While Pallas fills him with immortal force. With equal rage, indignant Xanthus roars, And lifts his billows, and o'erwhelms his shores. Then thus to Simois! "Haste, my brother flood; And check this mortal that controls a god; Our bravest heroes else shall quit the fight, And Ilion tumble from her towery height. Call then thy subject streams, and bid them roar, From all thy fountains swell thy watery store, With broken rocks, and with a load of dead, Charge the black surge, and pour it on his head. Mark how resistless through the floods he goes, And boldly bids the warring gods be foes! But nor that force, nor form divine to sight, Shall aught avail him, if our rage unite: Whelm'd under our dark gulfs those arms shall lie, That blaze so dreadful in each Trojan eye; And deep beneath a sandy mountain hurl'd, Immersed remain this terror of the world. Such ponderous ruin shall confound the place, No Greeks shall e'er his perish'd relics grace, No hand his bones shall gather, or inhume; These his cold rites, and this his watery tomb." [Illustration: ACHILLES CONTENDING WITH THE RIVERS.] ACHILLES CONTENDING WITH THE RIVERS. He said; and on the chief descends amain, Increased with gore, and swelling with the slain. Then, murmuring from his beds, he boils, he raves, And a foam whitens on the purple waves: At every step, before Achilles stood The crimson surge, and deluged him with blood. Fear touch'd the queen of heaven: she saw dismay'd, She call'd aloud, and summon'd Vulcan's aid. "Rise to the war! the insulting flood requires Thy wasteful arm! assemble all thy fires! While