The passage is the speech of the Second-sighted Man, before the
slaying of the wooers in the hall:-
"Ah! wretched men, what ill is this ye suffer? In night are swathed
your heads, your faces, your knees; and the voice of wailing is
kindled, and cheeks are wet with tears, and with blood drip the
walls, and the fair main beams of the roof, and the porch is full of
shadows, and full is the courtyard, of ghosts that hasten hellward
below the darkness, and the sun has perished out of heaven, and an
evil mist sweeps up over all."
So much for Homer. The first attempt at metric translation here
given is meant to be in the manner of Pope:
"Caitiffs!" he cried, "what heaven-directed blight
Involves each countenance with clouds of night!
What pearly drop the ashen cheek bedews!
Why do the walls with gouts ensanguined ooze?
The court is thronged with ghosts that 'neath the gloom
Seek Pluto's realm, and Dis's awful doom;
In ebon curtains Phoebus hides his head,
And sable mist creeps upward from the dead."
This appears pretty bad, and nearly as un-Homeric as a translation
could possibly be. But Pope, aided by Broome and Fenton, managed to
be much less Homeric, much more absurd, and infinitely more
"classical" in the sense in which Pope is classical:
"O race to death devote! with Stygian shade
Each destined peer impending fates invade;
With tears your wan distorted cheeks are drowned;
With sanguine drops the walls are rubied round:
Thick swarms the spacious hall with howling ghosts,
To people Orcus and the burning coasts!
Nor gives the sun his golden orb to roll,
But universal night usurps the pole.
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