A Poem

Now pleasing sleep had seal’d each mortal eye,
Stretch’d in the tents the Grecian leaders lie:
The immortals slumber’d on their thrones above;
All, but the ever-wakeful eyes of Jove.(76)
To honour Thetis’ son he bends his care,
And plunge the Greeks in all the woes of war:
Then bids an empty phantom rise to sight,
And thus commands the vision of the night.

“Fly hence, deluding Dream! and light as air,(77)
To Agamemnon’s ample tent repair.
Bid him in arms draw forth the embattled train,
Lead all his Grecians to the dusty plain.
Declare, e’en now ’tis given him to destroy
The lofty towers of wide-extended Troy.
For now no more the gods with fate contend,
At Juno’s suit the heavenly factions end.
Destruction hangs o’er yon devoted wall,
And nodding Ilion waits the impending fall.”

Swift as the word the vain illusion fled,
Descends, and hovers o’er Atrides’ head;
Clothed in the figure of the Pylian sage,
Renown’d for wisdom, and revered for age:
Around his temples spreads his golden wing,
And thus the flattering dream deceives the king.