The justling rocks where fierce Charybdis raves,

And howling Scylla whirls her thunderous waves,

The cave of death! How his companions slay

The oxen sacred to the god of day.

Till Jove in wrath the rattling tempest guides,

And whelms the offenders in the roaring tides:

How struggling through the surge he reach’d the shores

Of fair Ogygia and Calypso’s bowers;

Where the gay blooming nymph constrain’d his stay,

With sweet, reluctant, amorous delay;

And promised, vainly promised, to bestow

Immortal life, exempt from age and woe:

How saved from storms Phæacia’s coast he trod,

By great Alcinous honour’d as a god,

Who gave him last his country to behold,

With change of raiment, brass, and heaps of gold


He ended, sinking into sleep, and shares

A sweet forgetfulness of all his cares.


Soon as soft slumber eased the toils of day,

Minerva rushes through the aërial way,

And bids Aurora with her golden wheels

Flame from the ocean o’er the eastern hills;

Uprose Ulysses from the genial bed,

And thus with thought mature the monarch said:


“My queen, my consort! through a length of years

We drank the cup of sorrow mix’d with tears;

Thou, for thy lord; while me the immortal powers

Detain’d reluctant from my native shores.

Now, bless’d again by Heaven, the queen display,

And rule our palace with an equal sway.

Be it my care, by loans, or martial toils,

To throng my empty folds with gifts or spoils.

But now I haste to bless Laertes’ eyes

With sight of his Ulysses ere he dies;

The good old man, to wasting woes a prey,

Weeps a sad life in solitude away.

But hear, though wise! This morning shall unfold

The deathful scene, on heroes heroes roll’d.

Thou with thy maids within the palace stay,

From all the scene of tumult far away!”


He spoke, and sheathed in arms incessant flies

To wake his son, and bid his friends arise.

“To arms!” aloud he cries; his friends obey,