In rags dishonest flutters with the air:

A stag’s torn hide is lapp’d around his reins;

A rugged staff his trembling hand sustains;

And at his side a wretched scrip was hung,

Wide-patch’d, and knotted to a twisted thong.

So looked the chief, so moved: to mortal eyes

Object uncouth! a man of miseries!

While Pallas, cleaving the wild fields of air,

To Sparta flies, Telemachus her care.


BOOK XIV.


ARGUMENT.

THE CONVERSATION WITH EUMAEUS.


Ulysses arrives in disguise at the house of Eumaeus, where he is received,

entertained, and lodged with the utmost hospitality. The several discourses of

that faithful old servant, with the feigned story told by Ulysses to conceal

himself, and other conversations on various subjects, take up this entire book.


But he, deep-musing, o’er the mountains stray’d

Through mazy thickets of the woodland shade,

And cavern’d ways, the shaggy coast along

With cliffs and nodding forests overhung.

Eumaeus at his sylvan lodge he sought,

A faithful servant, and without a fault.

Ulysses found him busied as he sate

Before the threshold of his rustic gate;

Around the mansion in a circle shone

A rural portico of rugged stone

(In absence of his lord with honest toil

His own industrious hands had raised the pile).

The wall was stone from neighbouring quarries borne,

Encircled with a fence of native thorn,

And strong with pales, by many a weary stroke

Of stubborn labour hewn from heart of oak:

Frequent and thick. Within the space were rear’d

Twelve ample cells, the lodgments of his herd.

Full fifty pregnant females each contain’d;

The males without (a smaller race) remain’d;

Doom’d to supply the suitors’ wasteful feast,

A stock by daily luxury decreased;

Now scarce four hundred left. These to defend,

Four savage dogs, a watchful guard, attend.

Here sat Eumaeus, and his cares applied

To form strong buskins of well-season’d hide.

Of four assistants who his labour share,