A sad variety of woes I mourn!

My mind, reflective, in a thorny maze

Devious from care to care incessant strays.

Now, wavering doubt succeeds to long despair;

Shall I my virgin nuptial vow revere;

And, joining to my son’s my menial train,

Partake his counsels, and assist his reign?

Or, since, mature in manhood, he deplores

His dome dishonour’d, and exhausted stores;

Shall I, reluctant! to his will accord;

And from the peers select the noblest lord;

So by my choice avow’d, at length decide

These wasteful love-debates, a mourning bride!

A visionary thought I’ll now relate;

Illustrate, if you know, the shadow’d fate:


“A team of twenty geese (a snow-white train!)

Fed near the limpid lake with golden grain,

Amuse my pensive hours. The bird of Jove

Fierce from his mountain-eyrie downward drove;

Each favourite fowl he pounced with deathful sway,

And back triumphant wing’d his airy way.

My pitying eyes effused a plenteous stream,

To view their death thus imaged in a dream;

With tender sympathy to soothe my soul,

A troop of matrons, fancy-form’d, condole.

But whilst with grief and rage my bosom burn’d,

Sudden the tyrant of the skies returned;

Perch’d on the battlements he thus began

(In form an eagle, but in voice a man):

`O queen! no vulgar vision of the sky

I come, prophetic of approaching joy;

View in this plumy form thy victor-lord;

The geese (a glutton race) by thee deplored,

Portend the suitors fated to my sword.’

This said, the pleasing feather’d omen ceased.

When from the downy bands of sleep released,

Fast by the limpid lake my swan-like train

I found, insatiate of the golden grain.”


“The vision self-explain’d (the chief replies)

Sincere reveals the sanction of the skies;

Ulysses speaks his own return decreed;

And by his sword the suitors sure to bleed.”


“Hard is the task, and rare,” (the queen rejoin’d,)

Impending destinies in dreams to find;