But absent now, perfidious and ingrate!

His stores ye ravage, and usurp his state.”


He thus: “O were the woes you speak the worst!

They form a deed more odious and accursed;

More dreadful than your boding soul divines;

But pitying Jove avert the dire designs!

The darling object of your royal care

Is marked to perish in a deathful snare;

Before he anchors in his native port,

From Pyle re-sailing and the Spartan court;

Horrid to speak! in ambush is decreed

The hope and heir of Ithaca to bleed!”


Sudden she sunk beneath the weighty woes,

The vital streams a chilling horror froze;

The big round tear stands trembling in her eye,

And on her tongue imperfect accents die.

At length in tender language interwove

With sighs, she thus expressed her anxious love;

“Why rarely would my son his fate explore,

Ride the wild waves, and quit the safer shore?

Did he with all the greatly wretched, crave

A blank oblivion, and untimely grave?”


“Tis not (replied the sage) to Medon given

To know, if some inhabitant of heaven

In his young breast the daring thought inspired

Or if, alone with filial duty fired,

The winds and waves he tempts in early bloom,

Studious to learn his absent father’s doom.”


The sage retired: unable to control

The mighty griefs that swell her labouring soul

Rolling convulsive on the floor is seen

The piteous object of a prostrate queen.

Words to her dumb complaint a pause supplies,

And breath, to waste in unavailing cries.

Around their sovereign wept the menial fair,

To whom she thus address’d her deep despair:


“Behold a wretch whom all the gods consign

To woe! Did ever sorrows equal mine?

Long to my joys my dearest lord is lost,

His country’s buckler, and the Grecian boast;

Now from my fond embrace, by tempests torn,

Our other column of the state is borne;

Nor took a kind adieu, nor sought consent!—

Unkind confederates in his dire intent!