And tears ran trickling from her aged eyes.

“O whither, whither flies my son (she cried)

To realms; that rocks and roaring seas divide?

In foreign lands thy father’s days decay’d.

And foreign lands contain the mighty dead.

The watery way ill-fated if thou try,

All, all must perish, and by fraud you die!

Then stay, my, child! storms beat, and rolls the main,

Oh, beat those storms, and roll the seas in vain!”


“Far hence (replied the prince) thy fears be driven:

Heaven calls me forth; these counsels are of Heaven.

But, by the powers that hate the perjured, swear,

To keep my voyage from the royal ear,

Nor uncompell’d the dangerous truth betray,

Till twice six times descends the lamp of day,

Lest the sad tale a mother’s life impair,

And grief destroy what time awhile would spare.”


Thus he. The matron with uplifted eyes

Attests the all-seeing sovereign of the skies.

Then studious she prepares the choicest flour,

The strength of wheat and wines an ample store.

While to the rival train the prince returns,

The martial goddess with impatience burns;

Like thee, Telemachus, in voice and size,

With speed divine from street to street she flies,

She bids the mariners prepared to stand,

When night descends, embodied on the strand.

Then to Noëmon swift she runs, she flies,

And asks a bark: the chief a bark supplies.


And now, declining with his sloping wheels,

Down sunk the sun behind the western hills

The goddess shoved the vessel from the shores,

And stow’d within its womb the naval stores,

Full in the openings of the spacious main

It rides; and now descends the sailor-train,


Next, to the court, impatient of delay.

With rapid step the goddess urged her way;

There every eye with slumberous chains she bound,

And dash’d the flowing goblet to the ground.

Drowsy they rose, with heavy fumes oppress’d,

Reel’d from the palace, and retired to rest.

Then thus, in Mentor’s reverend form array’d,