With gifts of price shall send him joyous home.”

Lured with the promised boon, when youthful prime

Ended in man, his mother’s natal clime

Ulysses sought; with fond affection dear

Amphitea’s arms received the royal heir:

Her ancient lord an equal joy possess’d;

Instant he bade prepare the genial feast:

A steer to form the sumptuous banquet bled,

Whose stately growth five flowery summers fed:

His sons divide, and roast with artful care

The limbs; then all the tasteful viands share.

Nor ceased discourse (the banquet of the soul),

Till Phœbus wheeling to the western goal

Resign’d the skies, and night involved the pole.

Their drooping eyes the slumberous shade oppress’d,

Sated they rose, and all retired to rest.


Soon as the morn, new-robed in purple light,

Pierced with her golden shafts the rear of night,

Ulysses, and his brave maternal race,

The young Autolyci, essay the chase.

Parnassus, thick perplex’d with horrid shades,

With deep-mouth’d hounds the hunter-troop invades;

What time the sun, from ocean’s peaceful stream,

Darts o’er the lawn his horizontal beam.

The pack impatient snuff the tainted gale;

The thorny wilds the woodmen fierce assail:

And, foremost of the train, his cornel spear

Ulysses waved, to rouse the savage war.

Deep in the rough recesses of the wood,

A lofty copse, the growth of ages, stood;

Nor winter’s boreal blast, nor thunderous shower,

Nor solar ray, could pierce the shady bower.

With wither’d foliage strew’d, a heapy store!

The warm pavilion of a dreadful boar.

Roused by the hounds’ and hunters’ mingling cries,

The savage from his leafy shelter flies;

With fiery glare his sanguine eye-balls shine,

And bristles high impale his horrid chine.

Young Ithacus advanced, defies the foe,

Poising his lifted lance in act to throw;

The savage renders vain the wound decreed,

And springs impetuous with opponent speed!

His tusks oblique he aim’d, the knee to gore;