"So terribly he mourn'd / That Thetis, in the deeps of her old father's seas, / Heard and lamented."

[larryhammer]

Okay, so, you guys who pointed out the aliterative meter of that translation of the Iliad into sonnets? (*cough* rymenhild *cough* swan_tower *cough*)

Behold this explicit attempt at an alliterative verse Iliad by F. W. Newman (brother of the more famous cardinal):

Of Peleus’ son, Achilles, sing,     oh goddess, the resentment
Accursed, which with countless pangs     Achaia’s army wounded,
And forward flung to Aïdes     full many a gallant spirit
Of heroes, and their very selves     did toss to dogs that ravin,
And unto every fowl, (for so     would Jove’s device be compass’d);
From that first day when feud arose     implacable, and parted
The son of Atreus, prince of men     and Achileus the godlike.

It's not the Old English meter, as there's (usually) four-then-three beats per hemistich, rather than two, but the alliteration -- it's there. At least he knew to alliterate on any stressed beat, rather than on initial syllables. Yeah, I know -- small comfort that.

Via same list of Homer translations as the sonnets. This was, btw, compiled by a classicist who has his own version, one that going by the opening is not bad.

---L.

Subject quote from "The Iliads of Homer," tr. George Chapman.

Comments

[thistleingrey.livejournal.com]

Interesting hybrid. It has way too many feet per half-line--I stumbled over "toss to dogs that ravin," which has a bunch of unresolvable syllables--but it's interesting to see what apparently made sense to Newman.

[larryhammer]

Interesting in several directions. Most of them not good ones.