This gift, long since when Sparta’s shore he trod,

On young Ulysses Iphitus bestowed:

Beneath Orsilochus’ roof they met;

One loss was private, one a public debt;

Messena’s state from Ithaca detains

Three hundred sheep, and all the shepherd swains;

And to the youthful prince to urge the laws,

The king and elders trust their common cause.

But Iphitus, employed on other cares,

Search’d the wide country for his wandering mares,

And mules, the strongest of the labouring kind;

Hapless to search; more hapless still to find!

For journeying on to Hercules, at length

That lawless wretch, that man of brutal strength,

Deaf to Heaven’s voice, the social rites transgress’d;

And for the beauteous mares destroy’d his guest.

He gave the bow; and on Ulysses’ part

Received a pointed sword, and missile dart:

Of luckless friendship on a foreign shore

Their first, last pledges! for they met no more.

The bow, bequeath’d by this unhappy hand,

Ulysses bore not from his native land;

Nor in the front of battle taught to bend,

But kept in dear memorial of his friend.


Now gently winding up the fair ascent,

By many an easy step the matron went;

Then o’er the pavement glides with grace divine

(With polish’d oak the level pavements shine);

The folding gates a dazzling light display’d,

With pomp of various architrave o’erlaid.

The bolt, obedient to the silken string,

Forsakes the staple as she pulls the ring;

The wards respondent to the key turn round;

The bars fall back; the flying valves resound;

Loud as a bull makes hill and valley ring,

So roar’d the lock when it released the spring.

She moves majestic through the wealthy room,

Where treasured garments cast a rich perfume;

There from the column where aloft it hung,

Reach’d in its splendid case, the bow unstrung;

Across her knees she laid the well-known bow,

And pensive sate, and tears began to flow.

To full satiety of grief she mourns,