Classic Poem

BOOK V

T HE saffron morn, with early blushes spread,
Now rose refulgent from Tithonus' bed,
With new-born day to gladden mortal sight,
And gild the courts of heaven with sacred light.
Then met the eternal synod of the sky,
Before the god, who thunders from on high,
Supreme in might, sublime in majesty.
Pallas to these deplores the unequal fates
Of wise Ulysses, and his toils relates:
Her hero's danger touched the pitying Power,
The nymph's seducements, and the magic bower.
Thus she began her plaint. " Immortal Jove!
And you who fill the blissful seats above!
Let kings no more with gentle mercy sway,
Or bless a people willing to obey,
But crush the nations with an iron rod,
And every monarch be the scourge of God,
If from your thoughts Ulysses you remove,
Who ruled his subjects with a father's love.
Sole in an isle, encircled by the main,
Abandoned, banished from his native reign,
Unblessed he sighs, detained by lawless charms,
And pressed unwilling in Calypso's arms.
Nor friends are there, nor vessels to convey,
Nor oars to cut the immeasurable way.
And now fierce traitors, studious to destroy
His only son, their ambushed fraud employ;
Who, pious, following his great father's fame,
To sacred Pylos and to Sparta came. "
" What words are these? " replied the Power who forms
The clouds of night, and darkens heaven with storms;
" Is not already in thy soul decreed,
The chief's return shall make the guilty bleed?
What cannot Wisdom do? Thou may'st restore
The son in safety to his native shore;
While the fell foes, who late in ambush lay,
With fraud defeated measure back their way. "
Then thus to Hermes the command was given,
" Hermes, thou chosen messenger of heaven!
Go, to the nymph be these our orders borne,
'Tis Jove's decree, Ulysses shall return:
The patient man shall view his old abodes,
Nor helped by mortal hand, nor guiding gods,
In twice ten days shall fertile Scheria find,
Alone, and floating to the wave and wind.
The bold Phaeacians there, whose haughty line
Is mixed with gods, half human, half divine,
The chief shall honour as some heavenly guest,
And swift transport him to his place of rest.
His vessels loaded with a plenteous store
Of brass, of vestures, and resplendent ore,
A richer prize than if his joyful isle
Received him charged with Ilion's noble spoil,
His friends, his country, he shall see, though late;
Such is our sovereign will, and such is fate. "
He spoke. The god who mounts the winged winds
Fast to his feet the golden pinions binds,
That high through fields of air his flight sustain
O'er the wide earth, and o'er the boundless main.
He grasps the wand that causes sleep to fly,
Or in soft slumber seals the wakeful eye:
Then shoots from heaven to high Pieria's steep,
And stoops incumbent on the rolling deep.
So watery fowl, that seek their fishy food,
With wings expanded o'er the foaming flood,
Now sailing smooth the level surface sweep,
Now dip their pinions in the briny deep.
Thus o'er the world of waters Hermes flew,
Till now the distant island rose in view:
Then, swift ascending from the azure wave,
He took the path that winded to the cave.
Large was the grot, in which the nymph he found,
The fair-haired nymph with every beauty crowned;
She sate and sung; the rocks resound her lays;
The cave was brightened with a rising blaze;
Cedar and frankincense, an odorous pile,
Flamed on the hearth, and wide perfumed the isle,
While she with work and song the time divides,
And through the loom the golden shuttle guides.
Without the grot a various sylvan scene
Appeared around, and groves of living green;
Poplars and alders ever quivering played,
And nodding cypress formed a fragrant shade,
On whose high branches, waving with the storm,
The birds of broadest wing their mansions form,
The chough, the sea-mew, the loquacious crow,
And scream aloft, and skim the deeps below.
Depending vines the shelving cavern screen,
With purple clusters blushing through the green.
Four limpid fountains from the clefts distil,
And every fountain pours a several rill,
In mazy windings wandering down the hill,
Where bloomy meads with vivid greens were crowned,
And glowing violets threw odours round.
A scene, where if a god should cast his sight,
A god might gaze, and wander with delight!
Joy touched the messenger of heaven: he stayed
Entranced, and all the blissful haunts surveyed.
Him, entering in the cave, Calypso knew;
For powers celestial to each other's view
Stand still confessed, though distant far they lie
To habitants of earth, or sea, or sky.
But sad Ulysses, by himself apart,
Poured the big sorrows of his swelling heart;
All on the lonely shore he sate to weep,
And rolled his eyes around the restless deep;
Towards his loved coast he roll'd his eyes in vain,
Till, dimmed with rising grief, they streamed again.
Now graceful seated on her shining throne,
To Hermes thus the nymph divine begun:
" God of the golden wand! on what behest
Arriv'st thou here, an unexpected guest?
Loved as thou art, thy free injunctions lay;
'Tis mine with joy and duty to obey.
Till now a stranger, in a happy hour
Approach, and taste the dainties of my bower. "
Thus having spoke, the nymph the table spread,
Ambrosial cates, with nectar rosy-red,
Hermes the hospitable rite partook,
Divine refection! then, recruited, spoke:
" What moved this journey from my native sky,
A goddess asks, nor can a god deny:
Hear then the truth. By mighty Jove's command
Unwilling have I trod this pleasing land;
For who, self-moved, with weary wing would sweep
Such length of ocean and unmeasured deep:
A world of waters! far from all the ways
Where men frequent, or sacred altars blaze?
But to Jove's will submission we must pay;
What Power so great to dare to disobey?
A man, he says, a man resides with thee,
Of all his kind most worn with misery;
The Greeks, whose arms for nine long years employed
Their force on Ilion, in the tenth destroyed;
At length, embarking in a luckless hour,
With conquest proud, incensed Minerva's power:
Hence on the guilty race her vengeance hurled
With storms pursued them through the liquid world.
There all his vessels sunk beneath the wave;
There all his dear companions found their grave;
Saved from the jaws of death by Heaven's decree,
The tempest drove him to these shores and thee.
Him, Jove now orders to his native lands
Straight to dismiss: so destiny commands:
Impatient fate his near return attends,
And calls him to his country, and his friends. "
Even to her inmost soul the goddess shook;
Then thus her anguish and her passion broke:
" Ungracious gods! with spite and envy cursed!
Still to your own ethereal race the worst!
Ye envy mortal and immortal joy,
And love, the only sweet of life, destroy.
Did ever goddess by her charms engage
A favoured mortal, and not feel your rage?
So when Aurora sought Orion's love,
Her joys disturbed your blissful hours above,
Till in Ortygia Dian's winged dart
Had pierced the hapless hunter to the heart.
So when the covert of the thrice-eared field
Saw stately Ceres to her passion yield,
Scarce could Iasion taste her heavenly charms,
But Jove's swift lightning scorched him in her arms.
" And is it now my turn, ye mighty Powers?
Am I the envy of your blissful bowers?
A man, an outcast to the storm and wave,
It was my crime to pity and to save,
When he who thunders rent his bark in twain,
And sunk his brave companions in the main.
Alone, abandoned, in mid ocean tossed,
The sport of winds, and driven from every coast,
Hither this man of miseries I led,
Received the friendless, and the hungry fed;
Nay, promised (vainly promised!) to bestow
Immortal life, exempt from age and woe.
'Tis past — and Jove decrees he shall remove:
Gods as we are, we are but slaves to Jove.
Go then he may; he must, if he ordain,
Try all those dangers, all those deeps, again;
But never, never shall Calypso send
To toils like these her husband and her friend.
What ships have I, what sailors to convey,
What oars to cut the long laborious way?
Yet I'll direct the safest means to go;
That last advice is all I can bestow. "
To her the Power who bears the charming rod:
" Dismiss the man, nor irritate the god;
Prevent the rage of him who reigns above,
For what so dreadful as the wrath of Jove? "
Thus having said, he cut the cleaving sky,
And in a moment vanished from her eye.
The nymph, obedient to divine command,
To seek Ulysses paced along the sand;
Him pensive on the lonely beach she found,
With streaming eyes in briny torrents drowned,
And inly pining for his native shore;
For now the soft enchantress pleased no more:
For now, reluctant and constrained by charms,
Absent he lay in her desiring arms:
In slumber wore the heavy night away,
On rocks and shores consumed the tedious day;
There sate all desolate, and sighed alone,
With echoing sorrows made the mountains groan,
And rolled his eyes o'er all the restless main,
Till, dimmed with rising grief, they streamed again.
Here, on his musing mood the goddess pressed,
Approaching soft, and thus the chief addressed:
" Unhappy man! to wasting woes a prey,
No more in sorrows languish life away:
Free as the winds I give thee now to rove —
Go, fell the timber of yon lofty grove,
And form a raft, and build the rising ship,
Sublime to bear thee o'er the gloomy deep.
To store the vessel let the care be mine,
With water from the rock, and rosy wine,
And life-sustaining bread, and fair array,
And prosperous gales to waft thee on the way.
These, if the gods with my desire comply,
The gods, alas, more mighty far than I,
And better skilled in dark events to come,
In peace shall land thee at thy native home. "
With sighs Ulysses heard the words she spoke,
Then thus his melancholy silence broke:
" Some other motive, goddess! sways thy mind,
Some close design, or turn of womankind,
Nor my return the end, nor this the way,
On a slight raft to pass the swelling sea,
Huge, horrid, vast! where scarce in safety sails
The best-built ship, though Jove inspire the gales.
The bold proposal how shall I fulfil,
Dark as I am, unconscious of thy will?
Swear, then, thou mean'st not what my soul forebodes;
Swear by the solemn oath that binds the gods. "
Him, while he spoke, with smiles Calypso eyed,
And gently grasped his hand, and thus replied:
" This shows thee, friend, by old experience taught,
And learned in all the wiles of human thought,
How prone to doubt, how cautious are the wise!
But hear, O earth, and hear, ye sacred skies!
And thou, O Styx! whose formidable floods
Glide through the shades, and bind the attesting gods!
No formed design, no meditated end,
Lurks in the council of thy faithful friend;
Kind the persuasion, and sincere my aim;
The same my practice, were my fate the same;
Heaven has not cursed me with a heart of steel,
But given the sense to pity and to feel. "
Thus having said, the goddess marched before:
He trod her footsteps in the sandy shore.
At the cool cave arrived, they took their state;
He filled the throne where Mercury had sate.
For him the nymph a rich repast ordains,
Such as the mortal life of man sustains;
Before herself were placed the cates divine,
Ambrosial banquet, and celestial wine.
Their hunger satiate, and their thirst repressed,
Thus spoke Calypso to her god-like guest:
" Ulysses! " with a sigh she thus began;
" O sprung from gods! in wisdom more than man!
Is then thy home the passion of thy heart?
Thus wilt thou leave me, are we thus to part?
Farewell! and ever joyful may'st thou be,
Nor break the transport with one thought of me.
But, ah, Ulysses! wert thou given to know
What Fate yet dooms thee, yet, to undergo,
Thy heart might settle in this scene of ease,
And ev'n these slighted charms might learn to please.
A willing goddess, and immortal life,
Might banish from thy mind an absent wife.
Am I inferior to a mortal dame?
Less soft my feature, lest august my frame?
Or shall the daughters of mankind compare
Their earth-born beauties with the heavenly fair? "
" Alas! for this, " the prudent man replies,
" Against Ulysses shall thy anger rise?
Loved and adored, O goddess, as thou art,
Forgive the weakness of a human heart.
Though well I see thy graces far above
The dear, though mortal, object of my love,
Of youth eternal well the difference know,
And the short date of fading charms below;
Yet every day, while absent thus I roam,
I languish to return and die at home.
Whate'er the gods shall destine me to bear
In the black ocean, or the watery war,
'Tis mine to master with a constant mind;
Inured to perils, to the worst resigned.
By seas, by wars, so many dangers run;
Still I can suffer: their high will be done! "
Thus while he spoke, the beamy sun descends,
And rising night her friendly shade extends.
To the close grot the lonely pair remove,
And slept delighted with the gifts of love.
When rosy morning called them from their rest,
Ulysses robed him in the cloak and vest;
The nymph's fair head a veil transparent graced,
Her swelling loins a radiant zone embraced
With flowers of gold: an under robe, unbound,
In snowy waves flowed glittering on the ground.
Forth issuing thus, she gave him first to wield
A weighty axe, with truest temper steeled,
And double-edged, the handle smooth and plain,
Wrought of the clouded olive's easy grain;
And next, a wedge to drive with sweepy sway:
Then to the neighbouring forest led the way.
On the lone island's utmost verge there stood
Of poplars, pines, and firs, a lofty wood,
Whose leafless summits to the skies aspire,
Scorched by the sun, or seared by heavenly fire,
Already dried. These pointing out to view,
The nymph just showed him, and with tears withdrew.
Now toils the hero: trees on trees o'erthrown
Fall crackling round him, and the forests groan:
Sudden, full twenty on the plain are strowed,
And lopped and lightened of their branchy load.
At equal angles these disposed to join,
He smoothed and squared them by the rule and line.
The wimbles for the work Calypso found;
With those he pierced them, and with clinchers bound.
Long and capacious as a shipwright forms
Some bark's broad bottom to out-ride the storms,
So large he built the raft; then ribbed it strong
From space to space, and nailed the planks along;
These formed the sides: the deck he fashioned last;
Then o'er the vessel raised the taper mast,
With crossing sail-yards dancing in the wind;
And to the helm the guiding rudder joined,
With yielding osiers fenced, to break the force
Of surging waves, and steer the steady course.
Thy loom, Calypso! for the future sails
Supplied the cloth, capacious of the gales;
With stays and cordage last he rigged the ship,
And, rolled on levers, launched her in the deep.
Four days were past, and now, the work complete,
Shone the fifth morn, when from her sacred seat
The nymph dismissed him, odorous garments given,
And bathed in fragrant oils that breathed of heaven:
Then filled two goat-skins with her hands divine,
With water one, and one with sable wine:
Of every kind provisions heaved aboard,
And the full decks with copious viands stored.
The goddess, last, a gentle breeze supplies,
To curl old Ocean, and to warm the skies.
And now, rejoicing in the prosperous gales,
With beating heart Ulysses spreads his sails:
Placed at the helm he sate, and marked the skies,
Nor closed in sleep his ever-watchful eyes.
There viewed the Pleiads, and the Northern Team,
And great Orion's more refulgent beam,
To which, around the axle of the sky,
The Bear, revolving, points his golden eye:
Who shines exalted on the ethereal plain,
Nor bathes his blazing forehead in the main.
Far on the left those radiant fires to keep
The nymph directed, as he sailed the deep.
Full seventeen nights he cut the foamy way:
The distant land appeared the following day:
Then swelled to sight Phaeacia's dusky coast,
And woody mountains, half in vapours lost;
That lay before him indistinct and vast,
Like a broad shield amid the watery waste.
But him, thus voyaging the deeps below,
From far, on Solyme's airial brow,
The king of ocean saw, and seeing burned,
From Æthiopia's happy climes returned;
The raging monarch shook his azure head,
And thus in secret to his soul he said:
" Heavens! how uncertain are the Powers on high!
Is then reversed the sentence of the sky,
In one man's favour: while a distant guest
I shared secure the Æthiopian feast?
Behold how near Phaeacia's land he draws,
The land affixed by Fate's eternal laws
To end his toils! Is then our anger vain?
No; if this sceptre yet commands the main. "
He spoke, and high the forky trident hurled,
Rolls clouds on clouds, and stirs the watery world,
At once the face of earth and sea deforms,
Swells all the winds, and rouses all the storms.
Down rushed the night: east, west, together roar;
And south and north roll mountains to the shore:
Then shook the hero, to despair resigned,
And questioned thus his yet unconquered mind:
" Wretch that I am! what farther fates attend
This life of toils, and what my destined end?
Too well, alas! the island goddess knew
On the black sea what perils should ensue.
New horrors now this destined head enclose;
Unfilled is yet the measure of my woes:
With what a cloud the brows of heaven are crowned!
What raging winds! what roaring waters round!
'Tis Jove himself the swelling tempest rears;
Death, present death, on every side appears.
Happy! thrice happy! who, in battle slain,
Pressed, in Atrides' cause, the Trojan plain!
Oh! had I died before that well-fought wall;
Had some distinguished day renowned my fall;
Such as was that when showers of javelins fled
From conquering Troy around Achilles dead;
All Greece had paid me solemn funerals then,
And spread my glory with the sons of men.
A shameful fate now hides my hapless head,
Unwept, unnoted, and for ever dead! "
A mighty wave rushed o'er him as he spoke,
The raft it covered, and the mast it broke:
Swept from the deck, and from the rudder torn,
Far on the swelling surge the chief was borne,
While by the howling tempest rent in twain,
Flew sail and sail-yards rattling o'er the main.
Long-pressed, he heaved beneath the weighty wave,
Clogged by the cumberous vest Calypso gave:
At length emerging, from his nostrils wide
And gushing mouth effused the briny tide:
Even then, not mindless of his last retreat,
He seized the raft, and leaped into his seat,
Strong with the fear of death. The rolling flood
Now here, now there, impelled the floating wood.
As when a heap of gathered thorns is cast
Now to, now fro, before the autumnal blast;
Together clung, it rolls around the field;
So rolled the float, and so its texture held:
And now the south, and now the north, bear sway,
And now the east the foamy floods obey,
And now the west wind whirls it o'er the sea.
The wandering chief, with toils on toils oppressed,
Leucothea saw, and pity touched her breast.
Herself a mortal once, of Cadmus' strain,
But now an azure sister of the main.
Swift as a sea-mew springing from the flood,
All radiant on the raft the goddess stood:
Then thus addressed him: " Thou whom heaven decrees
To Neptune's wrath, stern tyrant of the seas!
Unequal contest! not his rage and power,
Great as he is, such virtue shall devour.
What I suggest, thy wisdom will perform:
Forsake thy float, and leave it to the storm:
Strip off thy garments; Neptune's fury brave
With naked strength, and plunge into the wave.
To reach Phaeacia all thy nerves extend,
There Fate decrees thy miseries shall end.
This heavenly scarf beneath thy bosom bind,
And live; give all thy terrors to the wind.
Soon as thy arms the happy shore shall gain,
Return the gift, and cast it in the main;
Observe my orders, and with heed obey,
Cast it far off, and turn thy eyes away. "
With that, her hand the sacred veil bestows,
Then down the deeps she dived from whence she rose;
A moment snatched the shining form away,
And all was covered with the curling sea.
Struck with amaze, yet still to doubt inclined,
He stands suspended, and explores his mind.
" What shall I do? unhappy me! who knows
But other gods intend me other woes?
Whoe'er thou art, I shall not blindly join
Thy pleaded reason, but consult with mine:
For scarce in ken appears that distant isle
Thy voice foretells me shall conclude my toil.
Thus then I judge: while yet the planks sustain
The wild waves' fury, here I fixed remain:
But when their texture to the tempest yields,
I launch adventurous on the liquid fields,
Join to the help of gods the strength of man,
And take this method, since the best I can. "
While thus his thoughts an anxious council hold,
The raging god a watery mountain rolled;
Like a black sheet the whelming billows spread,
Burst o'er the float, and thundered on his head.
Planks, beams, disparted fly; the scattered wood
Rolls diverse, and in fragments strews the flood.
So the rude Boreas, o'er the field new-shorn,
Tosses and drives the scattered heaps of corn.
And now a single beam the chief bestrides:
There, poised awhile above the bounding tides,
His limbs discumbers of the clinging vest,
And binds the sacred cincture round his breast;
Then, prone on ocean in a moment flung,
Stretched wide his eager arms, and shot the seas along.
All naked now, on heaving billows laid,
Stern Neptune ey'd him, and contemptuous said:
" Go, learned in woes, and other foes essay!
Go, wander helpless on the watery way:
Thus, thus find out the destined shore, and then
If Jove ordains it, mix with happier men:
Whate'er thy fate, the ills our wrath could raise
Shall last remembered in thy best of days. "
Thus said, his sea-green steeds divide the foam,
And reach high Ægae and the towery dome.
Now, scarce withdrawn the fierce earth-shaking Power,
Jove's daughter Pallas watched the favouring hour;
Back to their caves she bade the winds to fly,
And hushed the blustering brethren of the sky.
The drier blasts alone of Boreas sway,
And bear him soft on broken waves away;
With gentle force impelling to that shore,
Where Fate has destined he shall toil no more.
And now two nights and now two days were past,
Since wide he wandered on the watery waste;
Heaved on the surge with intermitting breath,
And hourly panting in the arms of death,
The third fair morn now blazed upon the main;
Then glassy smooth lay all the liquid plain;
The winds were hushed, the billows scarcely curled,
And a dead silence stilled the watery world,
When, lifted on a ridgy wave, he spies
The land at distance, and with sharpened eyes,
As pious children joy with vast delight
When a loved sire revives before their sight,
Who, lingering long, has called on death in vain,
Fixed by some demon to his bed of pain,
Till Heaven by miracle his life restore;
So joys Ulysses at the appearing shore,
And sees, and labours onward as he sees,
The rising forests, and the tufted trees.
And now, as near approaching as the sound
Of human voice the listening ear may wound,
Amidst the rocks he hears a hollow roar
Of murmuring surges breaking on the shore:
Nor peaceful port was there, nor winding bay,
To shield the vessel from the rolling sea,
But cliffs, and shaggy shores, a dreadful sight!
All rough with rocks, with foamy billows white.
Fear seiz'd his slackened limbs and beating heart,
And thus he communed with his soul apart:
" Ah me! when o'er a length of waters tossed,
These eyes at last behold the unhoped-for coast,
No port receives me from the angry main,
But the loud deeps demand me back again.
Above sharp rocks forbid access; around
Roar the wild waves; beneath is sea profound;
No footing sure affords the faithless sand,
To stem too rapid, and too deep to stand.
If here I enter, my efforts are in vain,
Dashed on the cliffs or heaved into the main:
Or round the island if my course I bend,
Where the ports open, or the shores descend,
Back to the seas the rolling surge may sweep,
And bury all my hopes beneath the deep.
Or some enormous whale the god may send;
For many such on Amphitrite attend;
Too well the turns of mortal chance I know,
And hate relentless of my heavenly foe. "
While thus he thought, a monstrous wave upbore
The chief, and dashed him on the craggy shore;
Torn was his skin, nor had the ribs been whole,
But instant Pallas entered in his soul.
Close to the cliff with both his hands he clung,
And stuck adherent, and suspended hung;
Till the huge surge rolled off: then, backward sweep
The refluent tides, and plunge him in the deep.
As when the polypus, from forth his cave
Torn with full force, reluctant beats the wave;
His ragged claws are stuck with stones and sands;
So the rough rock had shagged Ulysses' hands.
And now had perished, whelm'd beneath the main,
The unhappy man; ev'n fate had been in vain;
But all-subduing Pallas lent her power,
And prudence saved him in the needful hour.
Beyond the beating surge his course he bore,
A wider circle, but in sight of shore,
With longing eyes, observing, to survey
Some smooth ascent, or safe sequestered bay.
Between the parting rocks at length he spied
A falling stream with gentler waters glide;
Where to the seas the shelving shore declined,
And formed a bay impervious to the wind,
To this calm port the glad Ulysses pressed,
And hailed the river, and its god addressed:
" Whoe'er thou art, before whose stream unknown
I bend, a suppliant at thy watery throne,
Hear, azure king! nor let me fly in vain
To thee from Neptune and the raging main.
Heaven hears and pities hapless men like me,
For sacred ev'n to gods is misery:
Let then thy waters give the weary rest,
And save a suppliant, and a man distressed. "
He prayed, and straight the gentle stream subsides,
Detains the rushing current of his tides,
Before the wanderer smooths the watery way,
And soft receives him from the rolling sea.
That moment, fainting as he touched the shore,
He dropped his sinewy arms; his knees no more
Performed their office, or his weight upheld;
His swoln heart heav'd; his bloated body swelled;
From mouth and nose the briny torrent ran;
And lost in lassitude lay all the man,
Deprived of voice, of motion, and of breath;
The soul scarce waking in the arms of death.
Soon as warm life its wonted office found,
The mindful chief Leucothea's scarf unbound;
Observant of her word, he turned aside
His head, and cast it on the rolling tide.
Behind him far, upon the purple waves
The waters waft it, and the nymph receives.
Now parting from the stream, Ulysses found
A mossy bank with pliant rushes crowned;
The bank he pressed, and gently kissed the ground;
Where on the flowery herb as soft he lay,
Thus to his soul the sage began to say:
" What will ye next ordain, ye powers on high?
And yet, ah yet, what fates are we to try?
Here by the stream, if I the night out-wear,
Thus spent already, how shall nature bear
The dews descending, and nocturnal air?
Or chilly vapours breathing from the flood
When morning rises? — If I take the wood,
And in thick shelter of innumerous boughs
Enjoy the comfort gentle sleep allows;
Though fenced from cold, and though my toil be passed,
What savage beasts may wander in the waste!
Perhaps I yet may fall a bloody prey
To prowling bears, or lions in the way. "
Thus long debating in himself he stood:
At length he took the passage to the wood,
Whose shady horrors on a rising brow
Waved high, and frowned upon the stream below.
There grew two olives, closest of the grove,
With roots entwined, and branches interwove;
Alike their leaves, but not alike they smiled
With sister-fruits; one fertile, one was wild.
Nor here the sun's meridian rays had power,
Nor wind sharp-piercing, nor the rushing shower,
The verdant arch so close its texture kept:
Beneath this covert great Ulysses crept.
Of gathered leaves an ample bed he made,
Thick strewn by tempest thro' the bowery shade;
Where three at least might winter's cold defy,
Though Boreas raged along the inclement sky.
This store with joy the patient hero found,
And, sunk amidst them, heaped the leaves around.
As some poor peasant, fated to reside
Remote from neighbours in a forest wide,
Studious to save what human wants require,
In embers heaped, preserves the seeds of fire:
Hid in dry foliage thus Ulysses lies,
Till Pallas poured soft slumbers on his eyes:
And golden dreams, the gift of sweet repose,
Lulled all his cares, and banished all his woes.