A boar’s obscener shape the god belies;

On spiry volumes, there a dragon rides;

Here, from our strict embrace a stream he glides.

At last, sublime, his stately growth he rears

A tree, and well-dissembled foliage wears.

Vain efforts with superior power compress’d,

Me with reluctance thus the seer address’d;

‘Say, son of Atreus, say what god inspired

This daring fraud, and what the boon desired?’

I thus: ‘O thou, whose certain eye foresees

The fix’d event of fate’s remote decrees;

After long woes, and various toil endured,

Still on this desert isle my fleet is moor’d,

Unfriended of the gales. All-knowing, say,

What godhead interdicts the watery way?

What vows repentant will the power appease,

To speed a prosperous voyage o’er the seas.’


“‘To Jove (with stern regard the god replies)

And all the offended synod of the skies,

Just hecatombs with due devotion slain,

Thy guilt absolved, a prosperous voyage gain.

To the firm sanction of thy fate attend!

An exile thou, nor cheering face of friend,

Nor sight of natal shore, nor regal dome,

Shalt yet enjoy, but still art doom’d to roam.

Once more the Nile, who from the secret source

Of Jove’s high seat descends with sweepy force,

Must view his billows white beneath thy oar,

And altars blaze along his sanguine shore.

Then will the gods with holy pomp adored,

To thy long vows a safe return accord.’


“He ceased: heart wounded with afflictive pain,

(Doom’d to repeat the perils of the main,

A shelfy track and long!) ‘O seer’ I cry,

‘To the stern sanction of the offended sky

My prompt obedience bows. But deign to say

What fate propitious, or what dire dismay,

Sustain those peers, the relics of our host,

Whom I with Nestor on the Phrygian coast

Embracing left? Must I the warriors weep,

Whelm’d in the bottom of the monstrous deep?

Or did the kind domestic friend deplore

The breathless heroes on their native shore?