With thousand kisses wander’d o’er his face:

“I, I am he; O father, rise! behold

Thy son, with twenty winters now grown old;

Thy son, so long desired, so long detain’d,

Restored, and breathing in his native land:

These floods of sorrow, O my sire, restrain!

The vengeance is complete; the suitor train,

Stretch’d in our palace, by these hands lie slain.”


Amazed, Laertes: “Give some certain sign

(If such thou art) to manifest thee mine.”


“Lo here the wound (he cries) received of yore,

The scar indented by the tusky boar,

When, by thyself, and by Anticlea sent,

To old Autolycus’ realms I went.

Yet by another sign thy offspring know;

The several trees you gave me long ago,

While yet a child, these fields I loved to trace,

And trod thy footsteps with unequal pace;

To every plant in order as we came,

Well-pleased, you told its nature and its name,

Whate’er my childish fancy ask’d, bestow’d:

Twelve pear-trees, bowing with their pendent load,

And ten, that red with blushing apples glow’d;

Full fifty purple figs; and many a row

Of various vines that then began to blow,

A future vintage! when the Hours produce

Their latent buds, and Sol exalts the juice.”


Smit with the signs which all his doubts explain,

His heart within him melts; his knees sustain

Their feeble weight no more: his arms alone

Support him, round the loved Ulysses thrown;

He faints, he sinks, with mighty joys oppress’d:

Ulysses clasps him to his eager breast.

Soon as returning life regains its seat,

And his breath lengthens, and his pulses beat:

“Yes, I believe (he cries) almighty Jove!

Heaven rules us yet, and gods there are above.

’Tis so—the suitors for their wrongs have paid—

But what shall guard us, if the town invade?

If, while the news through every city flies,

All Ithaca and Cephalenia rise?”

To this Ulysses: “As the gods shall please

Be all the rest: and set thy soul at ease.