Where loud Amnisus in the deep is lost.

His vessels moor’d (an incommodious port!)

The hero speeded to the Cnossian court:

Ardent the partner of his arms to find,

In leagues of long commutual friendship join’d.

Vain hope! ten suns had warm’d the western strand

Since my brave brother, with his Cretan band,

Had sail’d for Troy: but to the genial feast

My honour’d roof received the royal guest:

Beeves for his train the Cnossian peers assign,

A public treat, with jars of generous wine.

Twelve days while Boreas vex’d the aërial space,

My hospitable dome he deign’d to grace:

And when the north had ceased the stormy roar,

He wing’d his voyage to the Phrygian shore.”


Thus the fam’d hero, perfected in wiles,

With fair similitude of truth beguiles

The queen’s attentive ear: dissolved in woe,

From her bright eyes the tears unbounded flow,

As snows collected on the mountain freeze;

When milder regions breathe a vernal breeze,

The fleecy pile obeys the whispering gales,

Ends in a stream, and murmurs through the vales:

So, melting with the pleasing tale he told,

Down her fair cheek the copious torrent roll’d:

She to her present lord laments him lost,

And views that object which she wants the most,

Withering at heart to see the weeping fair,

His eyes look stern, and cast a gloomy stare;

Of horn the stiff relentless balls appear,

Or globes of iron fix’d in either sphere;

Firm wisdom interdicts the softening tear.

A speechless interval of grief ensues,

Till thus the queen the tender theme renews.


“Stranger! that e’er thy hospitable roof

Ulysses graced, confirm by faithful proof;

Delineate to my view my warlike lord,

His form, his habit, and his train record.”


“‘Tis hard (he cries,) to bring to sudden sight

Ideas that have wing’d their distant flight;

Rare on the mind those images are traced,

Whose footsteps twenty winters have defaced:

But what I can, receive.—In ample mode,