My craving bowels still require repast.

Howe’er the noble, suffering mind may grieve

Its load of anguish, and disdain to live,

Necessity demands our daily bread;

Hunger is insolent, and will be fed.

But finish, oh ye peers! what you propose,

And let the morrow’s dawn conclude my woes.

Pleased will I suffer all the gods ordain,

To see my soil, my son, my friends again.

That view vouchsafed, let instant death surprise

With ever-during shade these happy eyes!”


The assembled peers with general praise approved

His pleaded reason, and the suit he moved.

Each drinks a full oblivion of his cares,

And to the gifts of balmy sleep repairs,

Ulysses in the regal walls alone

Remain’d: beside him, on a splendid throne,

Divine Arete and Alcinous shone.

The queen, on nearer view, the guest survey’d,

Rob’d in the garments her own hands had made,

Not without wonder seen. Then thus began,

Her words addressing to the godlike man:


“Camest thou hither, wondrous stranger! say,

From lands remote and o’er a length of sea?

Tell, then, whence art thou? whence, that princely air?

And robes like these, so recent and so fair?”


“Hard is the task, O princess! you impose

(Thus sighing spoke the man of many woes),

The long, the mournful series to relate

Of all my sorrows sent by Heaven and Fate!

Yet what you ask, attend. An island lies

Beyond these tracts, and under other skies,

Ogygia named, in Ocean’s watery arms;

Where dwells Calypso, dreadful in her charms!

Remote from gods or men she holds her reign,

Amid the terrors of a rolling main.

Me, only me, the hand of fortune bore,

Unblest! to tread that interdicted shore:

When Jove tremendous in the sable deeps

Launch’d his red lightning at our scattered ships;

Then, all my fleet and all my followers lost.

Sole on a plank on boiling surges toss’d,

Heaven drove my wreck the Ogygian Isle to find,

Full nine days floating to the wave and wind.