was yet a former copy, more varied, and more deformed with
interlineations.

The beginning of the second book varies very little from the printed
page, and is therefore set down without any parallel. The few
slight differences do not require to be elaborately displayed.


Now pleasing sleep had sealed each mortal eye:
Stretched in the tents the Grecian leaders lie;
The Immortals slumbered on their thrones above,
All but the ever-wakeful eye of Jove.
To honour Thetis' son he bends his care,
And plunge the Greeks in all the woes of war.
Then bids an empty phantom rise to sight,
And thus commands the vision of the night:
directs
Fly hence, delusive dream, and, light as air,
To Agamemnon's royal tent repair;
Bid him in arms draw forth the embattled train,
March all his legions to the dusty plain.
Now tell the King 'tis given him to destroy
Declare even now
The lofty walls of wide-extended Troy;
towers
For now no more the gods with fate contend;
At Juno's suit the heavenly factions end.
Destruction hovers o'er yon devoted wall,
hangs
And nodding Ilion waits the impending fall.