More powerful advocates than vain complaints.

Approach that hour! insufferable wrong

Cries to the gods, and vengeance sleeps too long.

Rise then, ye peers! with virtuous anger rise;

Your fame revere, but most the avenging skies.

By all the deathless powers that reign above,

By righteous Themis and by thundering Jove

(Themis, who gives to councils, or denies

Success; and humbles, or confirms the wise),

Rise in my aid! suffice the tears that flow

For my lost sire, nor add new woe to woe.

If e’er he bore the sword to strengthen ill,

Or, having power to wrong, betray’d the will,

On me, on me your kindled wrath assuage,

And bid the voice of lawless riot rage.

If ruin to your royal race ye doom,

Be you the spoilers, and our wealth consume.

Then might we hope redress from juster laws,

And raise all Ithaca to aid our cause:

But while your sons commit the unpunish’d wrong,

You make the arm of violence too strong.”


While thus he spoke, with rage and grief he frown’d,

And dash’d the imperial sceptre to the ground.

The big round tear hung trembling in his eye:

The synod grieved, and gave a pitying sigh,

Then silent sate—at length Antinous burns

With haughty rage, and sternly thus returns:


“O insolence of youth! whose tongue affords

Such railing eloquence, and war of words.

Studious thy country’s worthies to defame,

Thy erring voice displays thy mother’s shame.

Elusive of the bridal day, she gives

Fond hopes to all, and all with hopes deceives.

Did not the sun, through heaven’s wide azure roll’d,

For three long years the royal fraud behold?

While she, laborious in delusion, spread

The spacious loom, and mix’d the various thread:

Where as to life the wondrous figures rise,

Thus spoke the inventive queen, with artful sighs:


“Though cold in death Ulysses breathes no more,

Cease yet awhile to urge the bridal hour:

Cease, till to great Laertes I bequeath

A task of grief, his ornaments of death.