None but Orion e’er surpassed their height:

The wondrous youths had scarce nine winters told,

When high in air, tremendous to behold,

Nine ells aloft they rear’d their towering head,

And full nine cubits broad their shoulders spread.

Proud of their strength, and more than mortal size,

The gods they challenge, and affect the skies:

Heaved on Olympus tottering Ossa stood;

On Ossa, Pelion nods with all his wood.

Such were they youths! had they to manhood grown

Almighty Jove had trembled on his throne,

But ere the harvest of the beard began

To bristle on the chin, and promise man,

His shafts Apollo aim’d; at once they sound,

And stretch the giant monsters o’er the ground.


“There mournful Phaedra with sad Procris moves,

Both beauteous shades, both hapless in their loves;

And near them walk’d with solemn pace and slow,

Sad Adriadne, partner of their woe:

The royal Minos Ariadne bred,

She Theseus loved, from Crete with Theseus fled:

Swift to the Dian isle the hero flies,

And towards his Athens bears the lovely prize;

There Bacchus with fierce rage Diana fires,

The goddess aims her shaft, the nymph expires.


“There Clymene and Mera I behold,

There Eriphyle weeps, who loosely sold

Her lord, her honour, for the lust of gold.

But should I all recount, the night would fail,

Unequal to the melancholy tale:

And all-composing rest my nature craves,

Here in the court, or yonder on the waves;

In you I trust, and in the heavenly powers,

To land Ulysses on his native shores.”


He ceased; but left so charming on their ear

His voice, that listening still they seem’d to hear,

Till, rising up, Arete silence broke,

Stretch’d out her snowy hand, and thus she spoke:


“What wondrous man heaven sends us in our guest;

Through all his woes the hero shines confess’d;

His comely port, his ample frame express

A manly air, majestic in distress.

He, as my guest, is my peculiar care: