displayed her divinity, disappears. The suitors of Penelope make great

entertainments, and riot in her palace till night. Phemius sings to them the

return of the Grecians, till Penelope puts a stop to the song. Some words arise

between the suitors and Telemachus, who summons the council to meet the day

following.


The man for wisdom’s various arts renown’d,

Long exercised in woes, O Muse! resound;

Who, when his arms had wrought the destined fall

Of sacred Troy, and razed her heaven-built wall,

Wandering from clime to clime, observant stray’d,

Their manners noted, and their states survey’d,

On stormy seas unnumber’d toils he bore,

Safe with his friends to gain his natal shore:

Vain toils! their impious folly dared to prey

On herds devoted to the god of day;

The god vindictive doom’d them never more

(Ah, men unbless’d!) to touch that natal shore.

Oh, snatch some portion of these acts from fate,

Celestial Muse! and to our world relate.


Now at their native realms the Greeks arrived;

All who the wars of ten long years survived;

And ’scaped the perils of the gulfy main.

Ulysses, sole of all the victor train,

An exile from his dear paternal coast,

Deplored his absent queen and empire lost.

Calypso in her caves constrain’d his stay,

With sweet, reluctant, amorous delay;

In vain-for now the circling years disclose

The day predestined to reward his woes.

At length his Ithaca is given by fate,

Where yet new labours his arrival wait;

At length their rage the hostile powers restrain,

All but the ruthless monarch of the main.

But now the god, remote, a heavenly guest,

In Æthiopia graced the genial feast

(A race divided, whom with sloping rays

The rising and descending sun surveys);

There on the world’s extremest verge revered

With hecatombs and prayer in pomp preferr’d,

Distant he lay: while in the bright abodes

Of high Olympus, Jove convened the gods:

The assembly thus the sire supreme address’d,