And tilting o’er the bay the vessels ride:

To anchor there my fellows I command,

And spies commission to explore the land.

But, sway’d by lust of gain, and headlong will,

The coasts they ravage, and the natives kill.

The spreading clamour to their city flies,

And horse and foot in mingled tumult rise.

The reddening dawn reveals the circling fields,

Horrid with bristly spears, and glancing shields.

Jove thunder’d on their side. Our guilty head

We turn’d to flight; the gathering vengeance spread

On all parts round, and heaps on heaps lie dead.

I then explored my thought, what course to prove

(And sure the thought was dictated by Jove):

Oh, had he left me to that happier doom,

And saved a life of miseries to come!

The radiant helmet from my brows unlaced,

And low on earth my shield and javelin cast,

I meet the monarch with a suppliant’s face,

Approach his chariot, and his knees embrace,

He heard, he saved, he placed me at his side;

My state he pitied, and my tears he dried,

Restrain’d the rage the vengeful foe express’d,

And turn’d the deadly weapons from my breast.

Pious! to guard the hospitable rite,

And fearing Jove, whom mercy’s works delight.


“In Ægypt thus with peace and plenty bless’d,

I lived (and happy still have lived) a guest.

On seven bright years successive blessings wait;

The next changed all the colour of my fate.

A false Phoenician, of insiduous mind,

Versed in vile arts, and foe to humankind,

With semblance fair invites me to his home;

I seized the proffer (ever fond to roam):

Domestic in his faithless roof I stay’d,

Till the swift sun his annual circle made.

To Libya then he mediates the way;

With guileful art a stranger to betray,

And sell to bondage in a foreign land:

Much doubting, yet compell’d I quit the strand,

Through the mid seas the nimble pinnace sails,

Aloof from Crete, before the northern gales:

But when remote her chalky cliffs we lost,