Shall I, by waste undone, refund the dower?

How from my father should I vengeance dread!

How would my mother curse my hated head!

And while in wrath to vengeful fiends she cries,

How from their hell would vengeful fiends arise!

Abhorr’d by all, accursed my name would grow,

The earth’s disgrace, and human-kind my foe.

If this displease, why urge ye here your stay?

Haste from the court, ye spoilers, haste away:

Waste in wild riot what your land allows,

There ply the early feast, and late carouse.

But if to honour lost, ’tis still decreed

For you my bowl shall flow, my flocks shall bleed;

Judge, and assert my right, impartial Jove!

By him, and all the immortal host above

(A sacred oath), if heaven the power supply,

Vengeance I vow, and for your wrongs ye die.”


With that, two eagles from a mountain’s height

By Jove’s command direct their rapid flight;

Swift they descend, with wing to wing conjoin’d,

Stretch their broad plumes, and float upon the wind.

Above the assembled peers they wheel on high,

And clang their wings, and hovering beat the sky;

With ardent eyes the rival train they threat,

And shrieking loud denounce approaching fate.

They cuff, they tear; their cheeks and neck they rend,

And from their plumes huge drops of blood descend;

Then sailing o’er the domes and towers, they fly,

Full toward the east, and mount into the sky.


The wondering rivals gaze, with cares oppress’d,

And chilling horrors freeze in every breast,

Till big with knowledge of approaching woes,

The prince of augurs, Halitherses, rose:

Prescient he view’d the aërial tracks, and drew

A sure presage from every wing that flew.


“Ye sons (he cried) of Ithaca, give ear;

Hear all! but chiefly you, O rivals! hear.

Destruction sure o’er all your heads impends

Ulysses comes, and death his steps attends.

Nor to the great alone is death decreed;

We and our guilty Ithaca must bleed.