Look through its fringes to the sky,
Blue, blue, as if that sky let fall
A flower from its cerulean wall.
I would that thus, when I shall see
The hour of death draw near to me,
Hope, blossoming within my heart,
May look to heaven as I depart.
Extract from Bryant’s Translation of the Iliad. Book I.
(620-774.)
* * * But when now, at length,
The twelfth day came, the ever-living gods