(Don Juan, Canto iv. Stanzas 76–78.)
THERE, on the green and village-cotted hill, is
(Flank’d by the Hellespont, and by the sea)
Entomb’d the bravest of the brave, Achilles;
They say so—(Bryant says the contrary):
And further downward, tall and towering still, is
The tumulus—of whom? Heaven knows; ’t may be
Patroclus, Ajax, or Protesilaus;
All heroes, who, if living still, would slay us.
High barrows, without marble, or a name,
A vast, untill’d, and mountain-skirted plain,
And Ida in the distance, still the same,
And old Scamander, (if ’tis he) remain;
The situation seems still form’d for fame—
A hundred thousand men might fight again
With ease; but where I sought for Ilion’s walls,
The quiet sheep feeds, and the tortoise crawls;
Troops of untended horses; here and there
Some little hamlets, with new names uncouth;
Some shepherds (unlike Paris) led to stare
A moment at the European youth
Whom to the spot their school-boy feelings bear;
A Turk, with beads in hand, and pipe in mouth,
Extremely taken with his own religion,
Are what I found there—but the devil a Phrygian.
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