He spoke, and round him breathed heroic fires; Minerva seconds what the sage inspires. The mist of darkness Jove around them threw She clear’d, restoring all the war to view; A sudden ray shot beaming o’er the plain, And show’d the shores, the navy, and the main: Hector they saw, and all who fly, or fight, The scene wide-opening to the blaze of light, First of the field great Ajax strikes their eyes, His port majestic, and his ample size: A ponderous mace with studs of iron crown’d, Full twenty cubits long, he swings around; Nor fights, like others, fix’d to certain stands But looks a moving tower above the bands; High on the decks with vast gigantic stride, The godlike hero stalks from side to side. So when a horseman from the watery mead (Skill’d in the manage of the bounding steed) Drives four fair coursers, practised to obey, To some great city through the public way; Safe in his art, as side by side they run, He shifts his seat, and vaults from one to one; And now to this, and now to that he flies; Admiring numbers follow with their eyes.