“‘Press not too far,’ replied the god: ‘but cease

To know what, known, will violate thy peace;

Too curious of their doom! with friendly woe

Thy breast will heave, and tears eternal flow.

Part live! the rest, a lamentable train!

Range the dark bounds of Pluto’s dreary reign.

Two, foremost in the roll of Mars renown’d,

Whose arms with conquest in thy cause were crown’d,

Fell by disastrous fate: by tempests toss’d,

A third lives wretched on a distant coast.


“By Neptune rescued from Minerva’s hate,

On Gyrae, safe Oilean Ajax sate,

His ship o’erwhelm’d; but, frowning on the floods,

Impious he roar’d defiance to the gods;

To his own prowess all the glory gave:

The power defrauding who vouchsafed to save.

This heard the raging ruler of the main;

His spear, indignant for such high disdain,

He launched; dividing with his forky mace

The aërial summit from the marble base:

The rock rush’d seaward, with impetuous roar

Ingulf’d, and to the abyss the boaster bore.


“By Juno’s guardian aid, the watery vast,

Secure of storms, your royal brother pass’d,

Till, coasting nigh the cape where Malen shrouds

Her spiry cliffs amid surrounding clouds,

A whirling gust tumultuous from the shore

Across the deep his labouring vessel bore.

In an ill-fated hour the coast he gain’d,

Where late in regal pomp Thyestes reigned;

But, when his hoary honours bow’d to fate,

Ægysthus govern’d in paternal state,

The surges now subside, the tempest ends;

From his tall ship the king of men descends;

There fondly thinks the gods conclude his toil:

Far from his own domain salutes the soil;

With rapture oft the verge of Greece reviews,

And the dear turf with tears of joy bedews.

Him, thus exulting on the distant stand,

A spy distinguish’d from his airy stand;

To bribe whose vigilance, Ægysthus told

A mighty sum of ill-persuading gold:

There watch’d this guardian of his guilty fear,