Behold him sinking in the western main.

The rugged soil allows no level space

For flying chariots, or the rapid race;

Yet, not ungrateful to the peasant’s pain,

Suffices fulness to the swelling grain;

The loaded trees their various fruits produce,

And clustering grapes afford a generous juice;

Woods crown our mountains, and in every grove

The bounding goats and frisking heifers rove;

Soft rains and kindly dews refresh the field,

And rising springs eternal verdure yield.

E’en to those shores is Ithaca renown’d,

Where Troy’s majestic ruins strew the ground.”


At this, the chief with transport was possess’d;

His panting heart exulted in his breast;

Yet, well dissembling his untimely joys,

And veiling truth in plausible disguise,

Thus, with an air sincere, in fiction bold,

His ready tale the inventive hero told:


“Oft have I heard in Crete this island’s name;

For ’twas from Crete, my native soil, I came,

Self-banished thence. I sail’d before the wind,

And left my children and my friends behind.

From fierce Idomeneus’ revenge I flew,

Whose son, the swift Orsilochus, I slew

(With brutal force he seized my Trojan prey,

Due to the toils of many a bloody day).

Unseen I ’scaped, and favour’d by the night,

In a Phoenician vessel took my flight,

For Pyle or Elis bound; but tempests toss’d

And raging billows drove us on your coast.

In dead of night an unknown port we gain’d;

Spent with fatigue, and slept secure on land.

But ere the rosy morn renew’d the day,

While in the embrace of pleasing sleep I lay,

Sudden, invited by auspicious gales,

They land my goods, and hoist their flying sails.

Abandon’d here, my fortune I deplore

A hapless exile on a foreign shore,”


Thus while he spoke, the blue-eyed maid began

With pleasing smiles to view the godlike man;

Then changed her form: and now, divinely bright,

Jove’s heavenly daughter stood confess’d to sight;

Like a fair virgin in her beauty’s bloom,