Who, straight propitious, in prophetic strain

Will teach you to repass the unmeasured main.’

She ceased, and bounding from the shelfy shore,

Round the descending nymph the waves resounding roar.


“High wrapp’d in wonder of the future deed,

with joy impetuous to the port I speed:

The wants of nature with repast suffice,

Till night with grateful shade involved the skies,

And shed ambrosial dews. Fast by the deep,

Along the tented shore, in balmy sleep,

Our cares were lost. When o’er the eastern lawn,

In saffron robes, the daughter of the dawn

Advanced her rosy steps, before the bay

Due ritual honours to the gods I pay;

Then seek the place the sea-born nymph assign’d,

With three associates of undaunted mind.

Arrived, to form along the appointed strand

For each a bed, she scoops the hilly sand;

Then, from her azure cave the finny spoils

Of four vast Phocae takes, to veil her wiles;

Beneath the finny spoils extended prone,

Hard toil! the prophet’s piercing eye to shun;

New from the corse, the scaly frauds diffuse

Unsavoury stench of oil, and brackish ooze;

But the bright sea-maid’s gentle power implored,

With nectar’d drops the sickening sense restored.


“Thus till the sun had travell’d half the skies,

Ambush’d we lie, and wait the bold emprise;

When, thronging quick to bask in open air,

The flocks of ocean to the strand repair;

Couch’d on the sunny sand, the monsters sleep;

Then Proteus, mounting from the hoary deep,

Surveys his charge, unknowing of deceit;

(In order told, we make the sum complete.)

Pleased with the false review, secure he lies,

And leaden slumbers press his drooping eyes.

Rushing impetuous forth, we straight prepare

A furious onset with the sound of war,

And shouting seize the god; our force to evade,

His various arts he soon resumes in aid;

A lion now, he curls a surgy mane;

Sudden our hands a spotted pard restrain;

Then, arm’d with tusks, and lightning in his eyes,