Till this funereal web my labours end:

Cease, till to good Laertes I bequeath

A task of grief, his ornaments of death:

Lest when the Fates his royal ashes claim,

The Grecian matrons taint my spotless fame;

Should he, long honour’d with supreme command,

Want the last duties of a daughter’s hand.’


“The fiction pleased, our generous train complies,

Nor fraud mistrusts in virtue’s fair disguise.

The work she plied, but studious of delay,

Each following night reversed the toils of day.

Unheard, unseen, three years her arts prevail;

The fourth, her maid reveal’d the amazing tale,

And show’d as unperceived we took our stand,

The backward labours of her faithless hand.

Forced she completes it; and before us lay

The mingled web, whose gold and silver ray

Display’d the radiance of the night and day.


“Just as she finished her illustrious toil,

Ill fortune led Ulysses to our isle.

Far in a lonely nook, beside the sea,

At an old swineherd’s rural lodge he lay:

Thither his son from sandy Pyle repairs,

And speedy lands, and secretly confers.

They plan our future ruin, and resort

Confederate to the city and the court.

First came the son; the father next succeeds,

Clad like a beggar, whom Eumaeus leads;

Propp’d on a staff, deform’d with age and care,

And hung with rags that flutter’d in the air.

Who could Ulysses in that form behold?

Scorn’d by the young, forgotten by the old,

Ill-used by all! to every wrong resigned,

Patient he suffered with a constant mind.

But when, arising in his wrath to obey

The will of Jove, he gave the vengeance way:

The scattered arms that hung around the dome

Careful he treasured in a private room;

Then to her suitors bade his queen propose

The archer’s strife, the source of future woes,

And omen of our death! In vain we drew

The twanging string, and tried the stubborn yew:

To none it yields but great Ulysses’ hands;

In vain we threat; Telemachus commands: