With frequent rites, and pure, avow’d thy power,

Be doom’d the worst of human ills to prove,

Unbless’d, abandon’d to the wrath of Jove?”


“Daughter! what words have pass’d thy lips unweigh’d!

(Replied the Thunderer to the martial maid;)

Deem not unjustly by my doom oppress’d,

Of human race the wisest and the best.

Neptune, by prayer repentant rarely won,

Afflicts the chief, to avenge his giant son,

Whose visual orb Ulysses robb’d of light;

Great Polypheme, of more than mortal might?

Him young Thousa bore (the bright increase

Of Phorcys, dreaded in the sounds and seas);

Whom Neptune eyed with bloom of beauty bless’d,

And in his cave the yielding nymph compress’d

For this the god constrains the Greek to roam,

A hopeless exile from his native home,

From death alone exempt—but cease to mourn;

Let all combine to achieve his wish’d return;

Neptune atoned, his wrath shall now refrain,

Or thwart the synod of the gods in vain.”


“Father and king adored!” Minerva cried,

“Since all who in the Olympian bower reside

Now make the wandering Greek their public care,

Let Hermes to the Atlantic isle repair;

Bid him, arrived in bright Calypso’s court,

The sanction of the assembled powers report:

That wise Ulysses to his native land

Must speed, obedient to their high command.

Meantime Telemachus, the blooming heir

Of sea-girt Ithaca, demands my care;

’Tis mine to form his green, unpractised years

In sage debates; surrounded with his peers,

To save the state, and timely to restrain

The bold intrusion of the suitor-train;

Who crowd his palace, and with lawless power

His herds and flocks in feastful rites devour.

To distant Sparta, and the spacious waste

Of Sandy Pyle, the royal youth shall haste.

There, warm with filial love, the cause inquire

That from his realm retards his god-like sire;

Delivering early to the voice of fame

The promise of a green immortal name.”