Verity writes in verse, with lines that run long and stay close to the Greek sentence structure. His register is contemporary without being colloquial. In Book 21, he gives Achilles the line "So, my friend, you too must die; why lament like this?" which is direct and spare. Graves, in the same passage, writes "Yes, friend, including you. Why bemoan your lot?" The difference is small but real: Graves cuts faster and sounds more conversational. In Book 6, Graves turns the leaves simile into a rhyming stanza with "All forest leaves are born to die; / All mortal men the same," which adds a bounce the Greek does not have. Verity keeps the image flat and sequential, which matches the plain, steady Greek more closely. Graves worked in the mid-twentieth century and produced a prose translation with verse interpolations for passages he treated as song or formal speech. That choice lets him move quickly through narrative but pulls the verse passages away from Homer's continuous texture. In Book 1, his opening is a rhymed lyric with "Inflamed Achilles, Peleus' son" set in metered couplets, which reads as a self-contained poem rather than an epic invocation. Verity keeps the opening as verse that runs across the page without rhyme, so the momentum carries forward. Graves gains speed and vividness in his prose passages. Verity keeps closer to the Greek word order and epithets, which costs some pace but preserves the formal weight that Homer's original audience heard in every repeated formula.
SING, goddess, the anger of Achilles, Peleus' son,
the accursed anger which brought the Achaeans countless
agonies and hurled many mighty shades of heroes into Hades,
causing them to become the prey of dogs and
all kinds of birds; and the plan of Zeus was fulfilled.
Sing from the time the two men were first divided in strife—
Atreus' son, lord of men, and glorious Achilles.
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.