Not so the queen; the downy bands of sleep

By grief relax’d she waked again to weep:

A gloomy pause ensued of dumb despair;

Then thus her fate invoked, with fervent prayer


“Diana! speed thy deathful ebon dart,

And cure the pangs of this convulsive heart.

Snatch me, ye whirlwinds! far from human race,

Toss’d through the void illimitable space

Or if dismounted from the rapid cloud,

Me with his whelming wave let Ocean shroud!

So, Pandarus, thy hopes, three orphan fair,

Were doom’d to wander through the devious air;

Thyself untimely, and thy consort died,

But four celestials both your cares supplied.

Venus in tender delicacy rears

With honey, milk, and wine their infant years;

Imperial Juno to their youth assigned

A form majestic, and sagacious mind;

With shapely growth Diana graced their bloom;

And Pallas taught the texture of the loom.

But whilst, to learn their lots in nuptial love,

Bright Cytherea sought the bower of Jove

(The God supreme, to whose eternal eye

The registers of fate expanded lie);

Wing’d Harpies snatch the unguarded charge away,

And to the Furies bore a grateful prey.

Be such my lot! Or thou, Diana, speed

Thy shaft, and send me joyful to the dead;

To seek my lord among the warrior train,

Ere second vows my bridal faith profane.

When woes the waking sense alone assail,

Whilst Night extends her soft oblivious veil,

Of other wretches’ care the torture ends;

No truce the warfare of my heart suspends!

The night renews the day distracting theme,

And airy terrors sable every dream.

The last alone a kind illusion wrought,

And to my bed my loved Ulysses brought,

In manly bloom, and each majestic grace,

As when for Troy he left my fond embrace;

Such raptures in my beating bosom rise,

I deem it sure a vision of the skies.”


Thus, whilst Aurora mounts her purple throne,

In audible laments she breathes her moan;

The sounds assault Ulysses’ wakeful ear;