Page:Metamorphoses (Ovid, 1567).djvu/322

Achilles chafed like a Bull that in the open list
With dreadfull homes dooth push ageinst the scarlet clothes that there
Are hanged up to make him feerce, and when he would them teare
Dooth fynd his wounds deluded. Then Achilles lookt uppon
His Javelings socket, if the head thereof were looce or gone.
The head stacke fast. My hand byleeke is weakened then (quoth lice),
And all the force it had before is spent on one I see.
For sure I am it was of strength, both when I first downe threw
Lyrnessus walles, and when I did Ile Tenedos subdew,
And eeke Aetions Thebe with her proper blood embrew.
And when so many of the folke of Tewthranie I slew,
That with theyr blood Caycus streame became of purple hew.
And when the noble Telephus did of my Dart of steele
The dowble force, of wounding and of healing also feele.
Yea even the heapes of men slayne heere by mee, that on this strond
Are lying still to looke uppon, doo give to understond
That this same hand of myne both had and still hath strength. This sed,
(As though he had distrusted all his dooings ere that sted,)
He threw a Dart ageinst a man of Lycia land that hyght
Menetes, through whose Curets and his brest he strake him quyght.
And when he saw with dying limbes him sprawling on the ground,
He stepped to him streyght, and pulld the Javeling from the wound,
And sayd alowd: This is the hand, this is the selfsame dart
With which my hand did strike even now Menetes to the hart.
Ageinst my tother Copemate will I use the same: I pray
To God it may have like successe. This sed, without delay
He sent it toward Cygnet, and the weapon did not stray,
Nor was not shunned. Insomuch it lighted full uppon
His shoulder: and it gave a rappe as if uppon sum ston
It lyghted had, rebownding backe. Howbeeit where it hit,
Achilles sawe it bloodye, and was vaynly glad of it.
For why there was no wound. It was Menetes blood. Then lept
He hastly from his Charyot downe, and like a madman stept
To carelesse Cygnet with his swoord. He sawe his swoord did pare
His Target and his morion bothe. But when it toucht the bare,
His bodye was so hard, it did the edge thereof abate.
He could no lengar suffer him to tryumph in that rate,