With fury burns; while careless they convey
Promiscuous every guest to every bay.
These ears have heard my royal sire disclose
A dreadful story, big with future woes,
How Neptune raged, and how, by his command,
Firm rooted in a surge a ship should stand
A monument of wrath; how mound on mound
Should bury these proud towers beneath the ground.
But this the gods may frustrate or fulfil,
As suits the purpose of th' eternal will.
But say through what waste regions hast thou stray'd,
What customs noted, and what coasts survey'd ;
Possess'd by wild barbarians fierce in arms,
Or men whose bosom tender pity warms?
Say why the fate of Troy awaked thy cares,
Why heaved thy bosom, and why flow'd thy tears?
Just are the ways of Heaven: from Heaven proceed
The woes of man; Heaven doom'd the Greeks to bleed,
A theme of future song! Say, then, if slain
Some dear-loved brother press'd the Phrygian plain?
Or bled some friend, who bore a brother's part,
And claim'd by merit, not by blood, the heart?
THE ADVENTURES OF THE CICONS, LOTOPHAGI, AND CYCLOPS.
Ulysses begins the relation of his adventures; how, after the destruction of Troy, he with his companions made an incursion on the Cicons, by whom they were repulsed; and meeting with a storm, were driven to the coast of the Lotophagi. From thence they sailed to the land of the Cyclops, whose manners and situation are particularly characterized. The giant Polyphemus and his cave described; the usage Ulysses and his companions met with there; and lastly, the method and artifice by which he escaped.
thus Ulysses: "Thou whom first in sway, As first in virtue, these thy realms obey;
How sweet the products of a peaceful reign!
The heaven-taught poet, and enchanting strain;
The well-fill'd palace, the perpetual feast,
A land rejoicing, and a people bless'd!
How goodly seems it ever to employ
Man's social days in union and in joy;
The plenteous board high-heap'd with cates divine,
And o'er the foaming bowl the laughing wine!
"Amid these joys, why seeks thy mind to know
Th' unhappy series of a wanderer's woe?
Remembrance sad, whose image to review,
Alas! must open all my wounds anew!
And oh, what first, what last shall I relate,
Of woes unnumber'd sent by Heaven and Fate?
"Know first the man (though now a wretch distress'd) Who hopes thee, monarch, for his future guest.
Behold Ulysses! no ignoble name,
Earth sounds my wisdom, and high heaven my fame.
"My native soil is Ithaca the fair,
Where high Neritus waves his woods in air;1
1 High Neritus, that is, far distant, for the sea at a distance seems to rise
Dulichium, Samè, and Zacynthus crown'd
With shady mountains, spread their isles around
(These to the north and night's dark regions run,
Those to Aurora and the rising sun).
Low lies our isle, yet bless'd in fruitful stores;
Strong are her sons, though rocky are her shores;
And none, ah none so lovely to my sight,
Of all the lands that heaven o'erspreads with light;
In vain Calypso long constrain'd my stay,
With sweet, reluctant, amorous delay;
With all her charms as vainly Circe strove,
And added magic to secure my love.
In pomps or joys, the palace or the grot,
My country's image never was forgot,
My absent parents rose before my sight,
And distant lay contentment and delight.
"Hear, then, the woes which mighty Jove ordain'd To wait my passage from the Trojan land.
The winds from Ilion to the Cicons' shore,
Beneath cold Ismarus, our vessels bore.
We boldly landed on the hostile place,
And sack'd the city, and destroy'd the race,
Their wives made captive, their possessions shared,
And every soldier found a like reward.
I then advised to fly; not so the rest,
Who stay'd to revel, and prolong the feast:
The fatted sheep and sable bulls they slay,
And bowls flow round, and riot wastes the day.
Meantime the Cicons, to their holds retired,
Call on the Cicons, with new fury fired;
With early morn the gather'd country swarms,
And all the continent is bright with arms;
Thick as the budding leaves or rising flowers
O'erspread the land, when spring descends in showers:
All expert soldiers, skill'd on foot to dare,
Or from the bounding courser urge the war.
Now fortune changes (so the Fates ordain);
Our hour was come to taste our share of pain.
Close at the ships the bloody fight began,
Wounded they wound, and man expires on man.
Long as the morning sun increasing bright
O'er heaven's pure azure spread the growing light,
Promiscuous death the form of war confounds,
Each adverse battle gored with equal wounds;
But when his evening wheels o'erhung the main,2
Then conquest crown'd the fierce Ciconian train.
Six brave companions from each ship we lost,
The rest escape in haste, and quit the coast.
With sails outspread we fly th' unequal strife,
Sad for their loss, but joyful of our life.
Yet as we fled, our fellows' rites we paid,
And thrice we call'd on each unhappy shade.
“Meanwhile the god, whose hand the thunder forms,
Drives clouds on clouds, and blackens heaven with storms:
Wide o'er the waste the rage of Boreas sweeps,
And night rush'd headlong on the shaded deeps.
Now here, now there, the giddy ships are borne,
And all the rattling shrouds in fragments torn.
We furl'd the sail, we plied the labouring oar,
Took down our masts, and row'd our ships to shore.
Two tedious days and two long nights we lay,
O'erwatch'd and batter'd in the naked bay.
But the third morning when Aurora brings,
We rear the masts, we spread the canvas wings;
Refresh'd, and careless on the deck reclined,
We sit, and trust the pilot aud the wind.
Then to my native country had I sail'd:
But, the cape doubled, adverse winds prevail'd.
Strong was the tide, which by the northern blast
Impell'd, our vessels on Cythera cast.
Nine days our fleet th' uncertain tempest bore
Far in wide ocean, and from sight of shore :
The tenth we touch'd, by various errors toss'd,
The land of Lotus and the flowery coast.
We climb'd the beach, and springs of water found,
Then spread our hasty banquet on the ground.
Three men were sent, deputed from the crew
(An herald one) the dubious coast to view,
And learn what habitants possess'd the place.
They went, and found a hospitable race:
Not prone to ill, nor strange to foreign guest,
They eat, they drink, and nature gives the feast:
The trees around them all their food produce;
Lotus the name: divine, nectareous juice!
2 His evening wheels. Literally, "when the oxen were loosed from labour." 3 Lotus. "A great difference of opinion has prevailed among the moderns
(Thence call'd Lotophagi); which whoso tastes,
Insatiate riots in the sweet repasts,
Nor other home, nor other care intends,
But quits his house, his country, and his friends.
The three we sent, from off th' enchanting ground
We dragged reluctant, and by force we bound:
The rest in haste forsook the pleasing shore,
Or, the charm tasted, had return'd no more.
Now placed in order on their banks, they sweep
The sea's smooth face, and cleave the hoary deep;
With heavy hearts we labour through the tide,
To coasts unknown, and oceans yet untried.
"The land of Cyclops first, a savage kind,
Nor tamed by manners, nor by laws confined:
Untaught to plant, to turn the glebe and sow;
They all their products to free nature owe.
The soil untill'd a ready harvest yields,
With wheat and barley wave the golden fields.
Spontaneous wines from weighty clusters pour,
And Jove descends in each prolific shower.
By these no statutes and no rights are known,
No council held, no monarch fills the throne,
But high on hills, or airy cliffs, they dwell,
Or deep in caves whose entrance leads to hell.
Each rules his race, his neighbour not his care,
Heedless of others, to his own severe.
"Opposed to the Cyclopean coasts, there lay An isle, whose hills their subject fields survey;
as to what the ancients intended by the lotus; the history of it is mixed with fable, from passing through the hands of poets. Of the existence of a fruit growing spontaneously, furnishing the popular food of nations, there is no doubt, as it is mentioned by various authors of credit, and among the rest by Polyb. ap. Athen. 14. 65, who appears to have seen it in the country of the Lotophagi; there appear to have been two distinct species of lotus, because Herodotus and Pliny describe a marked difference, the one being an aquatic plant, whose root and seeds were eaten in Egypt, the other the fruit of a shrub on the sandy coast of Libya; Herod. 4. 177, in speaking of the Libyan lotus, says that the fruit is of the size of the mastu, sweet like the date, and a kind of wine is made of it; Pliny, 13. 17, describes two different kinds, the one found near the Syrtes, the other in Egypt: the former he describes from Corn. Nepos as the fruit of a tree, as big as a bean, of a yellow colour, sweet and pleasant to the taste; the fruit was bruised and made into a kind of paste, and stored up for food; a kind of wine was made from it, resembling mead, which would not keep many days." Barker's Lempriere.
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