His eye withdrew, and fix’d it on the ground;

Curious to hear his queen the silence break:

Amazed she sate, and impotent to speak;

O’er all the man her eyes she rolls in vain,

Now hopes, now fears, now knows, then doubts again.

At length Telemachus: “Oh, who can find

A woman like Penelope unkind?

Why thus in silence? why with winning charms

Thus slow to fly with rapture to his arms?

Stubborn the breast that with no transport glows,

When twice ten years are pass’d of mighty woes;

To softness lost, to spousal love unknown,

The gods have formed that rigid heart of stone!”

“O my Telemachus! (the queen rejoin’d,)

Distracting fears confound my labouring mind;

Powerless to speak. I scarce uplift my eyes,

Nor dare to question; doubts on doubts arise.

Oh deign he, if Ulysses, to remove

These boding thoughts, and what he is, to prove!”

Pleased with her virtuous fears, the king replies:

“Indulge, my son, the cautions of the wise;

Time shall the truth to sure remembrance bring:

This garb of poverty belies the king:

No more. This day our deepest care requires,

Cautious to act what thought mature inspires.

If one man’s blood, though mean, distain our hands,

The homicide retreats to foreign lands;

By us, in heaps the illustrious peerage falls,

The important deed our whole attention calls.”


“Be that thy care (Telemachus replies)

The world conspires to speak Ulysses wise;

For wisdom all is thine! lo, I obey,

And dauntless follow where you led the way;

Nor shalt thou in the day of danger find

Thy coward son degenerate lag behind.”


“Then instant to the bath (the monarch cries),

Bid the gay youth and sprightly virgins rise,

Thence all descend in pomp and proud array,

And bid the dome resound the mirthful lay;

While the sweet lyrist airs of rapture sings,

And forms the dance responsive to the strings,

That hence the eluded passengers may say,

‘Lo! the queen weds! we hear the spousal lay!’