And Heaven propitiate in the stranger’s cause;

Then join’d in council, proper means explore

Safe to transport him to the wished-for shore

(How distant that, imports us not to know,

Nor weigh the labour, but relieve the woe).

Meantime, nor harm nor anguish let him bear

This interval, Heaven trusts him to our care

But to his native land our charge resign’d,

Heaven’s is his life to come, and all the woes behind.

Then must he suffer what the Fates ordain;

For Fate has wove the thread of life with pain!

And twins, e’en from the birth, are Misery and Man!

But if, descended from the Olympian bower,

Gracious approach us some immortal power;

If in that form thou comest a guest divine:

Some high event the conscious gods design.

As yet, unbid they never graced our feast,

The solemn sacrifice call’d down the guest;

Then manifest of Heaven the vision stood,

And to our eyes familiar was the god.

Oft with some favour’d traveller they stray,

And shine before him all the desert way;

With social intercourse, and face to face,

The friends and guardians of our pious race.

So near approach we their celestial kind,

By justice, truth, and probity of mind;

As our dire neighbours of Cyclopæan birth

Match in fierce wrong the giant-sons of earth.”


“Let no such thought (with modest grace rejoin’d

The prudent Greek) possess the royal mind.

Alas! a mortal, like thyself, am I;

No glorious native of yon azure sky:

In form, ah how unlike their heavenly kind!

How more inferior in the gifts of mind!

Alas, a mortal! most oppress’d of those

Whom Fate has loaded with a weight of woes;

By a sad train of Miseries alone

Distinguish’d long, and second now to none!

By Heaven’s high will compell’d from shore to shore;

With Heaven’s high will prepared to suffer more.

What histories of toil could I declare!

But still long-wearied nature wants repair;

Spent with fatigue, and shrunk with pining fast,