Eternal silence, and portentous spoke:
“Achilles! yes! this day at least we bear
Thy rage in safety through the files of war:
But come it will, the fatal time must come,
Not ours the fault, but God decrees thy doom.
Not through our crime, or slowness in the course,
Tell thy Patroclus, but by heavenly force:
The bright far-shooting god who gilds the day
(Confess’d we saw him) tore his arms away.
No: could our swiftness o’er the winds prevail,