Stand forth, ye champions, who the gauntlet wield,

Or ye, the swiftest racers of the field!

Stand forth, ye wrestlers, who these pastimes grace!

I wield the gauntlet, and I run the race.

In such heroic games I yield to none,

Or yield to brave Laodamas alone:

Shall I with brave Laodamas contend?

A friend is sacred, and I style him friend.

Ungenerous were the man, and base of heart,

Who takes the kind, and pays the ungrateful part:

Chiefly the man, in foreign realms confined,

Base to his friend, to his own interest blind:

All, all your heroes I this day defy;

Give me a man that we our might may try.

Expert in every art, I boast the skill

To give the feather’d arrow wings to kill;

Should a whole host at once discharge the bow,

My well-aim’d shaft with death prevents the foe:

Alone superior in the field of Troy,

Great Philoctetes taught the shaft to fly.

From all the sons of earth unrivall’d praise

I justly claim; but yield to better days,

To those famed days when great Alcides rose,

And Eurytus, who bade the gods be foes

(Vain Eurytus, whose art became his crime,

Swept from the earth, he perish’d in his prime:

Sudden the irremeable way he trod,

Who boldly durst defy the bowyer god).

In fighting fields as far the spear I throw

As flies an arrow from the well-drawn bow.

Sole in the race the contest I decline,

Stiff are my weary joints, and I resign;

By storms and hunger worn; age well may fail,

When storms and hunger doth at once assail.”


Abash’d, the numbers hear the godlike man,

Till great Alcinous mildly thus began:


“Well hast thou spoke, and well thy generous tongue

With decent pride refutes a public wrong:

Warm are thy words, but warm without offence;

Fear only fools, secure in men of sense;

Thy worth is known. Then hear our country’s claim,

And bear to heroes our heroic fame:

In distant realms our glorious deeds display,

Repeat them frequent in the genial day;