And honey fresh, and Pramnian wines the treat:

But venom’d was the bread, and mix’d the bowl,

With drugs of force to darken all the soul:

Soon in the luscious feast themselves they lost,

And drank oblivion of their native coast.

Instant her circling wand the goddess waves,

To hogs transforms them, and the sty receives.

No more was seen the human form divine;

Head, face, and members, bristle into swine:

Still cursed with sense, their minds remain alone,

And their own voice affrights them when they groan.

Meanwhile the goddess in disdain bestows

The mast and acorn, brutal food! and strows

The fruits and cornel, as their feast, around;

Now prone and grovelling on unsavoury ground.


“Eurylochus, with pensive steps and slow.

Aghast returns; the messenger of woe,

And bitter fate. To speak he made essay,

In vain essay’d, nor would his tongue obey.

His swelling heart denied the words their way:

But speaking tears the want of words supply,

And the full soul bursts copious from his eye.

Affrighted, anxious for our fellows’ fates,

We press to hear what sadly he relates:


“We went, Ulysses! (such was thy command)

Through the lone thicket and the desert land.

A palace in a woody vale we found

Brown with dark forests, and with shades around.

A voice celestial echoed through the dome,

Or nymph or goddess, chanting to the loom.

Access we sought, nor was access denied:

Radiant she came: the portals open’d wide:

The goddess mild invites the guests to stay:

They blindly follow where she leads the way.

I only wait behind of all the train:

I waited long, and eyed the doors in vain:

The rest are vanish’d, none repass’d the gate,

And not a man appears to tell their fate.’


“I heard, and instant o’er my shoulder flung

The belt in which my weighty falchion hung

(A beamy blade): then seized the bended bow,

And bade him guide the way, resolved to go.

He, prostrate falling, with both hands embraced