or women can; Such hands may wound, but not incense a man. Nor boast the scratch thy feeble arrow gave, A coward's weapon never hurts the brave. Not so this dart, which thou may'st one day feel; Fate wings its flight, and death is on the steel: Where this but lights, some noble life expires; Its touch makes orphans, bathes the cheeks of sires, Steeps earth in purple, gluts the birds of air, And leaves such objects as distract the fair." Ulysses hastens with a trembling heart, Before him steps, and bending draws the dart: Forth flows the blood; an eager pang succeeds; Tydides mounts, and to the navy speeds. Now on the field Ulysses stands alone, The Greeks all fled, the Trojans pouring on; But stands collected in himself, and whole, And questions thus his own unconquer'd soul: "What further subterfuge, what hopes remain? What shame, inglorious if I quit the plain? What danger, singly if I stand the ground, My friends all scatter'd, all the foes around? Yet wherefore doubtful? let this truth suffice, The brave meets danger, and the coward flies. To die or conquer, proves a hero's heart; And, knowing this, I know a soldier's part." Such thoughts revolving in his careful breast, Near, and more near, the shady cohorts press'd; These, in the warrior, their own fate enclose; And round him deep the steely circle grows. So fares a boar whom all the troop surrounds Of shouting huntsmen and of clamorous hounds; He grinds his ivory tusks; he foams with ire; His sanguine eye-balls glare with living fire; By these, by those, on every part is plied; And the red slaughter spreads on every side. Pierced through the shoulder, first Deiopis fell; Next Ennomus and Thoon sank to hell; Chersidamas, beneath the navel thrust, Falls prone to earth, and grasps the bloody dust. Charops, the son of Hippasus, was near; Ulysses reach'd him with the fatal spear; But to his aid his brother Socus flies, Socus