Book III

Now front to front the marching armies shine,
Halt ere they meet, and form the lengthening line :
The chiefs conspicuous seen and heard afar,
Give the loud signal to the rushing war ;
Their dreadful trumpets deep-mouth'd hornets sound,
The sounded charge remurmurs o'er the ground;
E'en Jove proclaims a field of horror nigh,
And rolls low thunder through the troubled sky.

First to the fight the large Hypsiboas flew,
And brave Lychenor with a javelin slew.
The luckless warrior fill'd with generous flame,
Stood foremost glittering in the post of fame ;
When in his liver struck, the javelin hung ;
The mouse fell thundering, and the target rung ;
Prone to the ground he sinks his closing- eye,
And soil'd in dust his lovely tresses lie.

A spear at Pelion Troglodytes cast,
The missive spear within the bosom past ;
Death's sable shades the fainting frog surround,
And life's red tide runs ebbing from the wound.
Embasichytros felt Seutlaeus' dart
Transfix and quiver in his panting heart ;
But great Artophagus aveng'd the slain,
And big Seutlaeus tumbling loads the plain,
And Polyphonus dies, a frog renown'd
For boastful speech and turbulence of sound ;
Deep through the belly pierc'd, supine he lay,
And breath'd his soul against the face of day.

The strong Lymnocharis, who view'd with ire
A victor triumph, and a friend expire ;
With heaving arms a rocky fragment caught,
And fiercely flung where Troglodytes fought ;
A warrior vers'd in arts, of sure retreat,
But arts in vain elude impending fate ;
Full on his sinewy neck the fragment fell,
And o'er his eyelids clouds eternal dwell.
Lychenor, second of the glorious name,
Striding advanc'd, and took no wandering aim ;
Through all the frog the shining javelin flies,
And near the vanquish'd mouse the victor dies.

The dreadful stroke Crambophagus affrights,
Long bred to banquets, less inur'd to fights ;
Heedless he runs, and stumbles o'er the steep,
And wildly floundering flashes up the deep :
Lychenor following with a downward blow,
Reach'd in the lake his unrecover'd foe ;
Gasping he rolls, a purple stream of blood
Distains the surface of the silver flood ;
Through the wide wound the rushing entrails throng,
And slow the breathless carcass floats along.

Lymnisius good Tyroglyphus assails,
Prince of the mice that haunt the flowery vales,
Lost to the milky fares and rural seat,
He came to perish on the bank of fate.
The dread Pternoglyphus demands the fight,
Which tender Calaminthius shuns by flight,
Drops the green target, springing quits the foe,
Glides through the lake, and safely dives below.
But dire Pternophagus divides his way
Through breaking ranks, and leads the dreadful day.
No nibbling prince excell'd in fierceness more,
His parents fed him on the savage boar ;
But where his lance the field with blood imbru'd,
Swift as he mov'd, Hydrocharis pursu'd,
Till fallen in death he lies ; a shattering stone
Sounds on the neck, and crushes all the bone ;
His blood pollutes the verdure of the plain,
And from his nostrils bursts the gushing brain.

Lychopinax with Borb'rocoetes fights,
A blameless frog whom humbler life delights ;
The fatal javelin unrelenting flies,
And darkness seals the gentle croaker's eyes.

Incens'd Prassophagus, with sprightly bound,
Bears Cnissodioctes off the rising ground,
Then drags him o'er the lake depriv'd of breath,
And downward plunging, sinks his soul to death.
But now the great Psycarpax shines afar,
(Scarce he so great whose loss provok'd the war,)
Swift to revenge his fatal javelin fled,
And through the liver struck Pelusius dead ;
His freckled corpse before the victor fell,
His soul indignant sought the shades of hell.

This saw Pelobates, and from the flood
Heav'd with both hands a monstrous mass of mud :
The cloud obscene o'er all the hero flies,
Dishonours his brown face, and blots his eyes.
Enrag'd, and wildly spluttering, from the shore
A stone immense of size the warrior bore,
A load for labouring earth, whose bulk to raise,
Asks ten degenerate mice of modern days :
Full on the leg arrives the crushing wound ;
The frog supportless writhes upon the ground.

Thus flush'd, the victor wars with matchless force,
Till loud Craugasides arrests his course :
Hoarse-croaking threats precede ; with fatal speed
Deep through the belly ran the pointed reed,
Then strongly tugg'd, return'd imbru'd with gore ;
And on the pile his reeking entrails bore.

The lame Sitophagus, oppress'd with pain,
Creeps from the desperate dangers of the plain ;
And where the ditches rising weeds supply
To spread their lowly shades beneath the sky,
There lurks the silent mouse reliev'd from heat,
And safe embower'd, avoids the chance of fate.

But here Troxartes, Physignathus there,
Whirl the dire furies of the pointed spear :
But where the foot around its ankle plies,
Troxartes wounds, and Physignathus flies,
Halts to the pool a safe retreat to find,
And trails a dangling length of leg behind.
The mouse still urges, still the frog retires,
And half in anguish of the flight expires.

Then pious ardour young Prassaeus brings,
Betwixt the fortunes of contending kings :
Lank, harmless frog ! with forces hardly grown,
He darts the reed in combats not his own,
Which faintly tinkling on Troxartes' shield,
Hangs at the point, and drops upon the field.

Now nobly towering o'er the rest appears
A gallant prince that far transcends his years,
Pride of his sire, and glory of his house,
And more a Mars in combat than a mouse ;
His action bold, robust his ample frame,
And Meridarpax his resounding name.
The warrior singled from the fighting crowd,
Boasts the dire honours of his arms aloud ;
Then strutting near the lake, with looks elate,
To all its nations threats approaching fate.
And such his strength, the silver lakes around
Might roll their waters o'er unpeopled ground ;
But powerful Jove, who shows no less his grace
To frogs that perish, than to human race,
Felt soft compassion rising in his soul,
And shook his sacred head, that shook the pole.
Then thus to all the gazing powers began
The sire of gods, and frogs, and Mice, and man.

What seas of blood I view ! what worlds of slain !
An Iliad rising from a day's campaign !
How fierce his javelin o'er the trembling lakes
The black-furr'd hero Meridarpax shakes !
Unless some favouring deity descend,
Soon will the frogs' loquacious empire end.
Let dreadful Pallas wing'd with pity fly,
And make her aegis blaze before his eye :
While Mars refulgent on his rattling car,
Arrests his raging rival of the war.

He ceas'd, reclining with attentive head,
When thus the glorious god of combats said.

Nor Pallas, Jove ! though Pallas take the field,
With all the terrors of her hissing shield,
Nor Mars himself, though Mars in armour bright
Ascend his car, and wheel amidst the fight ;
Not these can drive the desperate mouse afar,
Or change the fortunes of the bleeding war.
Let all go forth, all heaven in arms arise ;
Or launch thy own red thunder from the skies;
Such ardent bolts as flew that wondrous day,
When heaps of Titans mix'd with mountains lay,
When all the giant race enormous fell,
And huge Enceladus was hurl'd to hell.

'Twas thus th' armipotent advis'd the gods,
When from his throne the cloud-compeller nods ;
Deep lengthening thunders run from pole to pole,
Olympus trembles as the thunders roll.
Then swift he whirls the brandish'd bolt around,
And headlong darts it at the distant ground ;
The bolt discharg'd inwrapp'd with lightning flies,
And rends its flaming passage through the skies :
Then earth's inhabitants, the nibblers, shake,
And frogs, the dwellers in the waters, quake.
Yet still the mice advance their dread design,
And the last danger threats the croaking line,
Till Jove, that inly mourn'd the loss they bore,
With strange assistants fill'd the frighted shore.

Pour'd from the neighb'ring strand, deform'd to view,
They march, a sudden unexpected crew !
Strong suits of armour round their bodies close,
Which, like thick anvils, blunt the force of blows ;
In wheeling marches turn'd, oblique they go ;
With harpy claws their limbs divide below ;
Fell sheers the passage to their mouth command ;
From out the flesh their bones by nature stand ;
Broad spread their backs, their shining shoulders rise ;
Unnumber'd joints distort their lengthen'd thighs ;
With nervous cords their hands are firmly brac'd ;
Their round black eyeballs in their bosom plac'd ;
On eight long feet the wondrous warriors tread ;
And either end alike supplies a head.
These, mortal wits to call the crabs agree,
The gods have other names for things than we.

Now where the jointures from their loins depend,
The heroes' tails with severing grasps they rend.
Here, short of feet, depriv'd the power to fly,
There, without hands, upon the field they lie.
Wrench'd from their holds, and scatter'd all around,
The bended lances heap the cumber'd ground.
Helpless amazement, fear pursuing fear,
And mad confusion through their host appear :
O'er the wild waste with headlong flight they go,
Or creep conceal'd in vaulted holes below.

But down Olympus to the western seas
Far-shooting Phoebus drove with fainter rays ;
And a whole war (so Jove ordain'd) begun,
Was fought, and ceas'd, in one revolving sun.