Against a column, fair with sculpture graced;

Where seemly ranged in peaceful order stood

Ulysses’ arms now long disused to blood.

He led the goddess to the sovereign seat,

Her feet supported with a stool of state

(A purple carpet spread the pavement wide);

Then drew his seat, familiar, to her side;

Far from the suitor-train, a brutal crowd,

With insolence, and wine, elate and loud:

Where the free guest, unnoted, might relate,

If haply conscious, of his father’s fate.

The golden ewer a maid obsequious brings,

Replenish’d from the cool, translucent springs;

With copious water the bright vase supplies

A silver laver of capacious size;

They wash. The tables in fair order spread,

They heap the glittering canisters with bread:

Viands of various kinds allure the taste,

Of choicest sort and savour, rich repast!

Delicious wines the attending herald brought;

The gold gave lustre to the purple draught.

Lured with the vapour of the fragrant feast,

In rush’d the suitors with voracious haste;

Marshall’d in order due, to each a sewer

Presents, to bathe his hands, a radiant ewer.

Luxurious then they feast. Observant round

Gay stripling youths the brimming goblets crown’d.

The rage of hunger quell’d, they all advance

And form to measured airs the mazy dance;

To Phemius was consign’d the chorded lyre,

Whose hand reluctant touch’d the warbling wire;

Phemius, whose voice divine could sweetest sing

High strains responsive to the vocal string.


Meanwhile, in whispers to his heavenly guest

His indignation thus the prince express’d:


“Indulge my rising grief, whilst these (my friend)

With song and dance the pompous revel end.

Light is the dance, and doubly sweet the lays,

When for the dear delight another pays.

His treasured stores those cormarants consume,

Whose bones, defrauded of a regal tomb

And common turf, lie naked on the plain,

Or doom’d to welter in the whelming main.