That here I sung, was force, and not desire;

This hand reluctant touch’d the warbling wire;

And let thy son attest, nor sordid pay,

Nor servile flattery, stain’d the moral lay.”


The moving words Telemachus attends,

His sire approaches, and the bard defends.

“O mix not, father, with those impious dead

The man divine! forbear that sacred head;

Medon, the herald, too, our arms may spare,

Medon, who made my infancy his care;

If yet he breathes, permit thy son to give

Thus much to gratitude, and bid him live.”


Beneath a table, trembling with dismay,

Couch’d close to earth, unhappy Medon lay,

Wrapp’d in a new-slain ox’s ample hide;

Swift at the word he cast his screen aside,

Sprung to the prince, embraced his knee with tears,

And thus with grateful voice address’d his ears


“O prince! O friend! lo, here thy Medon stands

Ah stop the hero’s unresisted hands,

Incensed too justly by that impious brood,

Whose guilty glories now are set in blood.”

To whom Ulysses with a pleasing eye:


“Be bold, on friendship and my son rely;

Live, an example for the world to read,

How much more safe the good than evil deed:

Thou, with the heaven-taught bard, in peace resort

From blood and carnage to yon open court:

Me other work requires.” With timorous awe

From the dire scene the exempted two withdraw,

Scarce sure of life, look round, and trembling move

To the bright altars of Protector Jove.


Meanwhile Ulysses search’d the dome, to find

If yet there live of all the offending kind.

Not one! complete the bloody tale he found,

All steep’d in blood, all gasping on the ground.

So, when by hollow shores the fisher-train

Sweep with their arching nets the roaring main,

And scarce the meshy toils the copious draught contain,

All naked of their element, and bare,

The fishes pant, and gasp in thinner air;

Wide o’er the sands are spread the stiffening prey,

Till the warm sun exhales their soul away.