Now, loved GOOD-NIGHT. songs, be laid to rest Of my people on the breast. In musk-scented cloud of sleep Of this weary one at length! That he, fresh with youthful strength, May the rock's dark fissures sever; He may walk in pleasure's ways, Yes, the dog, the faithful, true, 1 Written by Goethe as a wind-up to the Divan. He dedicates the songs to his people, the Germans; but desires that Gabriel may shut him himself up in a rocky cave, as the seven sleepers and the dog were, and translate him to Paradise in like manner with them. PREFACE. THE Achilleid is a mere fragment, being only the first canto of an epic poem descriptive of the life of Achilles after he slew Hector before Troy, which Goethe intended to occupy the space between Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. It is much to be regretted that the poem was never completed, for although it is one of the least known and least read of Goethe's compositions, it is in its conception and in the style in which it was commenced, one of the most worthy of preservation of his works. He himself desired to write it in accordance with the sentiment and spirit of the Iliad. How far he has succeeded it is hoped the following translation-the first, it is believed, ever made in the original hexameter metre-will help to show the English public. It opens with the closing scene of Hector's story, when Achilles stood watching from a distance, and with unsatisfied hatred towards the dead, the flames of the pyre that gradually consumed the remains of his noblest and most formidable enemy. He then proceeds to summon the Myrmidons, his vassals, to proceed with the erection of the mound, of which he had already laid the foundations, for the purpose of receiving the ashes of his friend Patroclus, who had been slain by Hector, and of himself when his own approaching fate, of which he had been repeatedly warned, should be accomplished. Whilst he is so engaged an assembly of the gods is held on Olympus. In this his mother Thetis appears, and after a passage of arms |