Classic Poem

And now, man-slaughtering Pallas tooke in hand
Her Snake-fring'd shield, and on that beam took stand
In her true forme, where Swallow-like she sat.
And then, in this way of the house and that:
The wooers (wounded at the heart with feare)
Fled the encounter: As in Pastures, where
Fat Herds of Oxen feede, about the field
(As if wilde madnesse their instincts impell'd)
The high-fed Bullockes flye: whom in the Spring
(When dayes are long) Gadbees, or Breezes sting.
Ulysses and his sonne, the Flyers chas'd;
As when with crooked Beakes and Seres, a cast
Of hill-bred Eagles, cast off at some game,
That yet their strengths keepe; But (put up) in flame
The Eagles stoopes; From which, along the field
The poore Fowles make wing: this and that way yield
Their hard-flowne Pinions: Then, the clouds assay
For scape or shelter; their forlorne dismay
All spirit exhaling, all wings strength to carry
Their bodies forth; and (truss'd up) to the Quarry
Their Faulconers ride in, and rejoyce to see
Their Hawkes performe a flight so fervently;
So (in their flight) Ulysses with his Heire,
Did stoope and cuffe the wooers, that the aire
Broke in vaste sighes: whose heads, they shot and cleft;
The Pavement boyling with the soules they reft.