"
--Cowper.
Or, as rendered by Pope,
"... Lord of earth and air!
O king! O father! hear my humble prayer!
Dispel this cloud, the light of heaven restore;
Give me to see and Ajax asks no more;
If Greece must perish we thy will obey,
But let us perish in the face of day."
Jupiter heard the prayer and dispersed the clouds. Then Ajax sent
Antilochus to Achilles with the intelligence of Patroclus's death,
and of the conflict raging for his remains. The Greeks at last
succeeded in bearing off the body to the ships, closely pursued by
Hector and Aeneas and the rest of the Trojans.
Achilles heard the fate of his friend with such distress that
Antilochus feared for a while that he would destroy himself. His
groans reached the ears of his mother, Thetis, far down in the
deeps of ocean where she abode, and she hastened to him to inquire
the cause. She found him overwhelmed with self-reproach that he
had indulged his resentment so far, and suffered his friend to
fall a victim to it. But his only consolation was the hope of
revenge. He would fly instantly in search of Hector. But his
mother reminded him that he was now without armor, and promised
him, if he would but wait till the morrow, she would procure for
him a suit of armor from Vulcan more than equal to that he had
lost.
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