Unbless’d he sighs, detained by lawless charms,

And press’d unwilling in Calypso’s arms.

Nor friends are there, nor vessels to convey,

Nor oars to cut the immeasurable way.

And now fierce traitors, studious to destroy

His only son, their ambush’d fraud employ;

Who, pious, following his great father’s fame,

To sacred Pylos and to Sparta came.”


“What words are these? (replied the power who forms

The clouds of night, and darkens heaven with storms;)

Is not already in thy soul decreed,

The chief’s return shall make the guilty bleed?

What cannot Wisdom do? Thou may’st restore

The son in safety to his native shore;

While the fell foes, who late in ambush lay,

With fraud defeated measure back their way.”


Then thus to Hermes the command was given:

“Hermes, thou chosen messenger of heaven!

Go, to the nymph be these our orders borne

’Tis Jove’s decree, Ulysses shall return:

The patient man shall view his old abodes,

Nor helped by mortal hand, nor guiding gods

In twice ten days shall fertile Scheria find,

Alone, and floating to the wave and wind.

The bold Phæacians there, whose haughty line

Is mixed with gods, half human, half divine,

The chief shall honour as some heavenly guest,

And swift transport him to his place of rest,

His vessels loaded with a plenteous store

Of brass, of vestures, and resplendent ore

(A richer prize than if his joyful isle

Received him charged with Ilion’s noble spoil),

His friends, his country, he shall see, though late:

Such is our sovereign will, and such is fate.”


He spoke. The god who mounts the winged winds

Fast to his feet the golden pinions binds,

That high through fields of air his flight sustain

O’er the wide earth, and o’er the boundless main:

He grasps the wand that causes sleep to fly,

Or in soft slumber seals the wakeful eye;

Then shoots from heaven to high Pieria’s steep,

And stoops incumbent on the rolling deep.