And all the continent is bright with arms;

Thick as the budding leaves or rising flowers

O’erspread the land, when spring descends in showers:

All expert soldiers, skill’d on foot to dare,

Or from the bounding courser urge the war.

Now fortune changes (so the Fates ordain);

Our hour was come to taste our share of pain.

Close at the ships the bloody fight began,

Wounded they wound, and man expires on man.

Long as the morning sun increasing bright

O’er heaven’s pure azure spreads the glowing light,

Promiscuous death the form of war confounds,

Each adverse battle gored with equal wounds;

But when his evening wheels o’erhung the main,

Then conquest crown’d the fierce Ciconian train.

Six brave companions from each ship we lost,

The rest escape in haste, and quit the coast,

With sails outspread we fly the unequal strife,

Sad for their loss, but joyful of our life.

Yet as we fled, our fellows’ rites we paid,

And thrice we call’d on each unhappy shade,


“Meanwhile the god, whose hand the thunder forms,

Drives clouds on clouds, and blackens heaven with storms:

Wide o’er the waste the rage of Boreas sweeps,

And night rush’d headlong on the shaded deeps.

Now here, now there, the giddy ships are borne,

And all the rattling shrouds in fragments torn.

We furl’d the sail, we plied the labouring oar,

Took down our masts, and row’d our ships to shore.

Two tedious days and two long nights we lay,

O’erwatch’d and batter’d in the naked bay.

But the third morning when Aurora brings,

We rear the masts, we spread the canvas wings;

Refresh’d and careless on the deck reclined,

We sit, and trust the pilot and the wind.

Then to my native country had I sail’d:

But, the cape doubled, adverse winds prevail’d.

Strong was the tide, which by the northern blast

Impell’d, our vessels on Cythera cast,

Nine days our fleet the uncertain tempest bore

Far in wide ocean, and from sight of shore: