[Iliad; B. XI V. 378] <br /> <br />So he, with a clear shout of laughter, <br />Forth of his ambush leapt, and he vaunted him, uttering thiswise: <br />'Hit thou art! not in vain flew the shaft; how by rights it had pierced thee <br />Into the undermost gut, therewith to have rived thee of life-breath! <br />Following that had the Trojans plucked a new breath from their direst, <br />They all frighted of thee, as the goats bleat in flight from a lion.' <br />Then unto him untroubled made answer stout Diomedes: <br />'Bow-puller, jiber, thy bow for thy glorying, spyer at virgins! <br />If that thou dared'st face me here out in the open with weapons, <br />Nothing then would avail thee thy bow and thy thick shot of arrows. <br />Now thou plumest thee vainly because of a graze of my footsole; <br />Reck I as were that stroke from a woman or some pettish infant. <br />Aye flies blunted the dart of the man that's emasculate, noughtworth! <br />Otherwise hits, forth flying from me, and but strikes it the slightest, <br />My keen shaft, and it numbers a man of the dead fallen straightway. <br />Torn, troth, then are the cheeks of the wife of that man fallen slaughtered, <br />Orphans his babes, full surely he reddens the earth with his blood-drops, <br />Rotting, round him the birds, more numerous they than the women.'<br /><br />George Meredith<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/paris-and-diomedes/
