Promiscuous every guest to every bay,

Stern Neptune raged; and how by his command

Firm rooted in the surge a ship should stand

(A monument of wrath); and mound on mound

Should hide our walls, or whelm beneath the ground.


“The Fates have follow’d as declared the seer.

Be humbled, nations! and your monarch hear.

No more unlicensed brave the deeps, no more

With every stranger pass from shore to shore;

On angry Neptune now for mercy call;

To his high name let twelve black oxen fall.

So may the god reverse his purposed will,

Nor o’er our city hang the dreadful hill.”


The monarch spoke: they trembled and obey’d,

Forth on the sands the victim oxen led;

The gathered tribes before the altars stand,

And chiefs and rulers, a majestic band.

The king of ocean all the tribes implore;

The blazing altars redden all the shore.


Meanwhile Ulysses in his country lay,

Released from sleep, and round him might survey

The solitary shore and rolling sea.

Yet had his mind through tedious absence lost

The dear resemblance of his native coast;

Besides, Minerva, to secure her care,

Diffused around a veil of thickened air;

For so the gods ordain’d to keep unseen

His royal person from his friends and queen;

Till the proud suitors for their crimes afford

An ample vengeance to their injured lord.


Now all the land another prospect bore,

Another port appear’d, another shore.

And long-continued ways, and winding floods,

And unknown mountains, crown’d with unknown woods

Pensive and slow, with sudden grief oppress’d,

The king arose, and beat his careful breast,

Cast a long look o’er all the coast and main,

And sought, around, his native realm in vain;

Then with erected eyes stood fix’d in woe,

And as he spoke, the tears began to flow.


“Ye gods (he cried), upon what barren coast,

In what new region, is Ulysses toss’d?

Possess’d by wild barbarians, fierce in arms?

Or men whose bosom tender pity warms?