To roam the howling desert of the main;

Or, in eternal shade of cold he lies,

Provoke new sorrows from these grateful eyes.’


“‘That chief (rejoin’d the god) his race derives

From Ithaca, and wondrous woes survives;

Laertes’ son: girt with circumfluous tides,

He still calamitous constraint abides.

Him in Calypso’s cave of late I view’d,

When streaming grief his faded cheek bedow’d.

But vain his prayer, his arts are vain, to move

The enamour’d goddess, or elude her love:

His vessel sunk, and dear companions lost,

He lives reluctant on a foreign coast.

But oh, beloved by Heaven! reserved to thee

A happier lot the smiling Fates decree:

Free from that law, beneath whose mortal sway

Matter is changed, and varying forms decay,

Elysium shall be thine: the blissful plains

Of utmost earth, where Rhadamanthus reigns.

Joys ever young, unmix’d with pain or fear,

Fill the wide circle of the eternal year:

Stern winter smiles on that auspicious clime:

The fields are florid with unfading prime;

From the bleak pole no winds inclement blow,

Mould the round hail, or flake the fleecy snow;

But from the breezy deep the blest inhale

The fragrant murmurs of the western gale.

This grace peculiar will the gods afford

To thee, the son of Jove, and beauteous Helen’s lord.’


“He ceased, and plunging in the vast profound,

Beneath the god and whirling billows bound.

Then speeding back, involved in various thought,

My friends attending at the shore I sought,

Arrived, the rage of hunger we control

Till night with silent shade invests the pole;

Then lose the cares of life in pleasing rest.

Soon as the morn reveals the roseate east,

With sails we wing the masts, our anchors weigh,

Unmoor the fleet, and rush into the sea.

Ranged on the banks, beneath our equal oars

White curl the waves, and the vex’d ocean roars

Then, steering backward from the Pharian isle,

We gain the stream of Jove-descended Nile;