Fagles writes in free verse: lines of varying length, strong stresses, and a register that sits close to contemporary speech without going colloquial. His opening word, "Rage," lands like a single blow, and his phrasing throughout stays direct. In the Book 21 passage, Achilles says "Come, friend, you too must die. Why moan about it so?" — short, flat, and almost conversational. Graves, in the same passage, writes "Why bemoan your lot?" which is slightly more formal but still plain. Where they diverge most sharply is in the earlier books: Graves renders the Book 6 leaves simile in rhyming stanzas ("All forest leaves are born to die / All mortal men the same"), imposing a regular beat and end-rhyme that Fagles entirely avoids. Fagles follows the narrative sequence of the Greek closely and keeps the epithets and repeated formulas that Homer uses as structural markers. In the Book 5 passage, his Athena calls Ares a "manic, born for disaster, double-dealing, lying two-face god," piling up adjectives in a way that mirrors the Greek's accumulation. Graves in the same speech produces "that mad, raving fellow, that universal curse, that renegade," which is readable and energetic but reorganizes the Greek list into something smoother for prose. The Book 6 leaves passage shows this most plainly: Fagles tracks Homer's movement from wind to new growth to the cycle of generations in the same order the Greek presents it; Graves turns it into a rhymed stanza sequence that changes the pacing and adds imagery not in the original.
Rage—Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus' son Achilles,
murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses,
hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls,
great fighters' souls, but made their bodies carrion,
feasts for the dogs and birds,
and the will of Zeus was moving toward its end.
Sing, Mountain Goddess, sing through me
That anger which most ruinously
Inflamed Achilles, Peleus' son,
And which, before the tale was done,
Had glutted Hell with champions—bold,
Stern spirits by the thousandfold;
Ravens and dogs their corpses ate
For thus did Zeus, who watched their fate,
See his resolve, first taken when
Proud Agamemnon, King of men,
An insult on Achilles cast,
Achieve accomplishment at last.