Lombardo writes in short, punchy lines that often read as fragments. His opening condenses the invocation into six lines, and "Black and murderous" adds a bluntness the Greek does not quite state in those terms. Mitchell writes in longer, more complete sentences that carry the reader through the syntax in a single movement. His opening runs seven lines but each one feels grammatically whole. In the leaves passage from Book 6, Lombardo gives "The wind blows them to the ground, but the tree / Sprouts new ones when spring comes again," where "the tree" is his own addition, plain and immediate. Mitchell writes "the forest / bursts with new buds," which is more expansive. Lombardo's register is closer to colloquial American speech; Mitchell's is contemporary but maintains a degree of formal elevation. Lombardo cuts for performance. His lines land with the rhythm of speech delivered aloud, and he accepts compression as the cost of momentum. In Book 21, he ends Achilles' speech at "I too / Am in death's shadow," dropping the specifics of dawn, noon, and dusk that appear in the Greek. Mitchell keeps those details: "death stands waiting for me / as well," and his version of the Athena passage in Book 5 names Ares as "a brazen and two-faced liar," which follows the Greek more fully than Lombardo's "shifty lout." Lombardo gains directness and loses precision. Mitchell stays closer to the content of each speech, though his longer lines carry less urgency.
Sing, Goddess, Achilles' rage,
Black and murderous, that cost the Greeks
Incalculable pain, pitched countless souls
Of heroes into Hades' dark,
And left their bodies to rot as feasts
For dogs and birds, as Zeus' will was done.
The rage of Achilles—sing it now, goddess, sing through me
the deadly rage that caused the Achaeans such grief
and hurled down to Hades the souls of so many fighters,
leaving their naked flesh to be eaten by dogs
and carrion birds, as the will of Zeus was accomplished.
Begin at the time when bitter words first divided
that king of men, Agamemnon, and godlike Achilles.