The bow he snatch’d, and in an instant bent;

Through every ring the victor arrow went.

Fierce on the threshold then in arms he stood;

Poured forth the darts that thirsted for our blood,

And frown’d before us, dreadful as a god!

First bleeds Antinous: thick the shafts resound,

And heaps on heaps the wretches strew the ground;

This way, and that, we turn, we fly, we fall;

Some god assisted, and unmann’d us all;

Ignoble cries precede the dying groans;

And battered brains and blood besmear the stones.


“Thus, great Atrides, thus Ulysses drove

The shades thou seest from yon fair realms above;

Our mangled bodies now deformed with gore,

Cold and neglected, spread the marble floor.

No friend to bathe our wounds, or tears to shed

O’er the pale corse! the honours of the dead.”


“Oh bless’d Ulysses! (thus the king express’d

His sudden rapture) in thy consort bless’d!

Not more thy wisdom than her virtue shined;

Not more thy patience than her constant mind.

Icarius’ daughter, glory of the past,

And model to the future age, shall last:

The gods, to honour her fair fame, shall rise

(Their great reward) a poet in her praise.

Not such, O Tyndarus! thy daughter’s deed,

By whose dire hand her king and husband bled;

Her shall the Muse to infamy prolong,

Example dread, and theme of tragic song!

The general sex shall suffer in her shame,

And e’en the best that bears a woman’s name.”


Thus in the regions of eternal shade

Conferr’d the mournful phantoms of the dead;

While from the town, Ulysses and his band

Pass’d to Laertes’ cultivated land.

The ground himself had purchased with his pain,

And labour made the rugged soil a plain,

There stood his mansion of the rural sort,

With useful buildings round the lowly court;

Where the few servants that divide his care

Took their laborious rest, and homely fare;

And one Sicilian matron, old and sage,

With constant duty tends his drooping age.