Ulysses comes! the suitors are no more!

No more they view the golden light of day!

Arise, and bless thee with the glad survey?”


Touch’d at her words, the mournful queen rejoin’d:

“Ah! whither wanders thy distemper’d mind?

The righteous powers, who tread the starry skies,

The weak enlighten, and confound the wise,

And human thought, with unresisted sway,

Depress or raise, enlarge or take away:

Truth, by their high decree, thy voice forsakes,

And folly with the tongue of wisdom speaks.

Unkind, the fond illusion to impose!

Was it to flatter or deride my woes?

Never did I sleep so sweet enjoy,

Since my dear lord left Ithaca for Troy.

Why must I wake to grieve, and curse thy shore,

O Troy?—may never tongue pronounce thee more!

Begone! another might have felt our rage,

But age is sacred, and we spare thy age.”


To whom with warmth: “My soul a lie disdains;

Ulysses lives, thy own Ulysses reigns:

That stranger, patient of the suitors’ wrongs,

And the rude license of ungovern’d tongues!

He, he is thine! Thy son his latent guest

Long knew, but lock’d the secret in his breast:

With well concerted art to end his woes,

And burst at once in vengeance on the foes.”


While yet she spoke, the queen in transport sprung

Swift from the couch, and round the matron hung;

Fast from her eye descends the rolling tear:

“Say, once more say, is my Ulysses here?

How could that numerous and outrageous band

By one be slain, though by a hero’s hand?”


“I saw it not (she cries), but heard alone,

When death was busy, a loud dying groan;

The damsel-train turn’d pale at every wound,

Immured we sate, and catch’d each passing sound;

When death had seized her prey, thy son attends,

And at his nod the damsel-train descends;

There terrible in arms Ulysses stood,

And the dead suitors almost swam in blood:

Thy heart had leap’d the hero to survey,

Stern as the surly lion o’er his prey,