Lowly she sate, and with dejected view

The fleecy threads her ivory fingers drew.

The prince and stranger shared the genial feast,

Till now the rage of thirst and hunger ceased.


When thus the queen: “My son! my only friend!

Say, to my mournful couch shall I ascend?

(The couch deserted now a length of years;

The couch for ever water’d with my tears;)

Say, wilt thou not (ere yet the suitor crew

Return, and riot shakes our walls anew),

Say, wilt thou not the least account afford?

The least glad tidings of my absent lord?”


To her the youth. “We reach’d the Pylian plains,

Where Nestor, shepherd of his people, reigns.

All arts of tenderness to him are known,

Kind to Ulysses’ race as to his own;

No father with a fonder grasp of joy

Strains to his bosom his long-absent boy.

But all unknown, if yet Ulysses breathe,

Or glide a spectre in the realms beneath;

For farther search, his rapid steeds transport

My lengthen’d journey to the Spartan court.

There Argive Helen I beheld, whose charms

(So Heaven decreed) engaged the great in arms.

My cause of coming told, he thus rejoin’d;

And still his words live perfect in my mind:


“‘Heavens! would a soft, inglorious, dastard train

An absent hero’s nuptial joys profane

So with her young, amid the woodland shades,

A timorous hind the lion’s court invades,

Leaves in that fatal lair her tender fawns,

And climbs the cliffs, or feeds along the lawns;

Meantime returning, with remorseless sway

The monarch savage rends the panting prey:

With equal fury, and with equal fame,

Shall great Ulysses reassert his claim.

O Jove! supreme! whom men and gods revere;

And thou whose lustre gilds the rolling sphere!

With power congenial join’d, propitious aid

The chief adopted by the martial maid!

Such to our wish the warrior soon restore,

As when, contending on the Lesbian shore,

His prowess Philomelides confess’d,

And loud acclaiming Greeks the victor bless’d: