Skill’d in the illustrious labours of the loom.


“O still the same Ulysses! (she rejoin’d,)

In useful craft successfully refined!

Artful in speech, in action, and in mind!

Sufficed it not, that, thy long labours pass’d,

Secure thou seest thy native shore at last?

But this to me? who, like thyself, excel

In arts of counsel and dissembling well;

To me? whose wit exceeds the powers divine,

No less than mortals are surpass’d by thine.

Know’st thou not me; who made thy life my care,

Through ten years’ wandering, and through ten years’ war;

Who taught thee arts, Alcinous to persuade,

To raise his wonder, and engage his aid;

And now appear, thy treasures to protect,

Conceal thy person, thy designs direct,

And tell what more thou must from Fate expect;

Domestic woes far heavier to be borne!

The pride of fools, and slaves’ insulting scorn?

But thou be silent, nor reveal thy state;

Yield to the force of unresisted Fate,

And bear unmoved the wrongs of base mankind,

The last, and hardest, conquest of the mind.”


“Goddess of wisdom! (Ithacus replies,)

He who discerns thee must be truly wise,

So seldom view’d and ever in disguise!

When the bold Argives led their warring powers,

Against proud Ilion’s well-defended towers,

Ulysses was thy care, celestial maid!

Graced with thy sight, and favoured with thy aid.

But when the Trojan piles in ashes lay,

And bound for Greece we plough’d the watery way;

Our fleet dispersed, and driven from coast to coast,

Thy sacred presence from that hour I lost;

Till I beheld thy radiant form once more,

And heard thy counsels on Phæacia’s shore.

But, by the almighty author of thy race,

Tell me, oh tell, is this my native place?

For much I fear, long tracts of land and sea

Divide this coast from distant Ithaca;

The sweet delusion kindly you impose,

To soothe my hopes, and mitigate my woes.”


Thus he. The blue-eyed goddess thus replies;