Immured within the silent bower of sleep,
Two portals firm the various phantoms keep:
Of ivory one; whence flit, to mock the brain,
Of winged lies a light fantastic train:
The gate opposed pellucid valves adorn,
And columns fair incased with polish'd horn:
Where images of truth for passage wait,
With visions manifest of future fate.
Not to this troop, I fear, that phantom soar'd,
Which spoke Ulysses to this realm restored:
Delusive semblance!-but my remnant life
Heaven shall determine in a gameful strife:
With that famed bow Ulysses taught to bend,
For me the rival archers shall contend.
As on the listed field he used to place

Six beams, opposed to six in equal space:
Elanced afar by his unerring art,

Sure through six circlets flew the whizzing dart.

So, when the sun restores the purple day,

Their strength and skill the suitors shall assay:

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To him the spousal honour is decreed,

Who through the rings directs the feather'd reed.
Torn from these walls (where long the kinder powers
With joy and pomp have wing'd my youthful hours!)
On this poor breast no dawn of bliss shall beam;
The pleasure past supplies a copious theme
For many a dreary thought, and many a doleful dream!"
"Propose the sportive lot (the chief replies),
Nor dread to name yourself the bowyer's prize :
Ulysses will surprise th' unfinish'd game,

Avow'd, and falsify the suitors' claim."

To whom with grace serene the queen rejoin'd: "In all thy speech what pleasing force I find! O'er my suspended woe thy words prevail;

I part reluctant from the pleasing tale,

But Heaven, that knows what all terrestrials need,
Repose to night, and toil to day decreed;
Grateful vicissitudes! yet me withdrawn,

Wakeful to weep and watch the tardy dawn
Establish'd use enjoins; to rest and joy
Estranged, since dear Ulysses sail'd to Troy!
Meantime instructed is the menial tribe
Your couch to fashion as yourself prescribe."

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Thus affable, her bower the queen ascends;
The sovereign step a beauteous train attends :
There imaged to her soul Ulysses rose;

Down her pale cheek new-streaming sorrow flows:
Till soft oblivious shade Minerva spread,
And o'er her eyes ambrosial slumber shed.

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BOOK XX.

ARGUMENT.

While Ulysses lies in the vestibule of the palace, he is witness to the disorders of the women. Minerva comforts him, and casts him asleep. At his waking he desires a favourable sign from Jupiter, which is granted. The feast of Apollo is celebrated by the people, and the suitors banquet in the palace. Telemachus exerts his authority amongst them; notwithstanding which, Ulysses is insulted by Ctesippus, and the rest continue in their excesses. Strange prodigies are seen by Theoclymenus the augur, who explains them to the destruction of the wooers.

AN ample hide divine Ulysses spread,

And form❜d of fleecy skins his humble bed
(The remnants of the spoil the suitor-crowd
In festival devour'd, and victims vow'd).
Then o'er the chief, Eurynomè the chaste
With duteous care a downy carpet cast:

With dire revenge his thoughtful bosom glows,
And, ruminating wrath, he scorns repose.

As thus pavilion'd in the porch he lay,
Scenes of lewd loves his wakeful eyes survey,
Whilst to nocturnal joys impure repair,
With wanton glee, the prostituted fair.

His heart with rage this new dishonour stung,
Wavering his thoughts in dubious balance hung:
Or instant should he quench the guilty flame
With their own blood, and intercept the shame;
Or to their lust indulge a last embrace,
And let the peers consummate the disgrace.
Round his swoln heart the murmurous fury rolls;
As o'er her young the mother-mastiff growls,

And bays the stranger groom: so wrath compress'd
Recoiling, mutter'd thunder in his breast.

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"Poor suffering heart! (he cried,) support the pain
Of wounded honour, and thy rage restrain.
Not fiercer woes thy fortitude could foil,
When the brave partners of thy ten years' toil
Dire Polypheme devour'd; I then was freed
By patient prudence from the death decreed."

Thus anchor'd safe on reason's peaceful coast,
Tempests of wrath his soul no longer toss'd;
Restless his body rolls, to rage resign'd:
As one who long with pale-eyed famine pined,
The savoury cates on glowing embers cast
Incessant turns, impatient for repast:
Ulysses so, from side to side devolved,
In self-debate the suitors' doom resolved:
When, in the form of mortal nymph array'd,
From heaven descends the Jove-born martial maid;
And hovering o'er his head in view confess'd,
The goddess thus her favourite care address'd :
"O thou, of mortals most inured to woes!
Why roll those eyes unfriended of repose?
Beneath thy palace-roof forget thy care;

Bless'd in thy queen! bless'd in thy blooming heir!
Whom, to the gods when suppliant fathers bow,
They name the standard of their dearest vow."
"Just is thy kind reproach (the chief rejoin'd),
Deeds full of fate distract my various mind,
In contemplation wrapp'd. This hostile crew
What single arm hath prowess to subdue?
Or if, by Jove's and thy auxiliar aid,
They're doom'd to bleed; O say, celestial maid!
Where shall Ulysses shun, or how sustain
Nations embattled to revenge the slain?"

"Oh impotence of faith! (Minerva cries,)

If man on frail unknowing man relies,
Doubt you the gods? Lo, Pallas' self descends,1
Inspires thy counsels, and thy toils attends.

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1 Pallas' self. After detailing the various omens which had foreshadowed the death of the suitors, Colonel Mure observes:

"This whole train of allusions, in a great measure pointless if taken separately, assumes collectively an awful significance as concentrated around the fatality, that Ulysses was suddenly to destroy the suitors with the bow, on the sacred day of Apollo, the god of archery and of sudden destruction. The catastrophe was to take place at the moment when they were assembled to celebrate, with their characteristic levity of demeanour, the festival of the god,

In me affianced, fortify thy breast,

Though myriads leagued thy rightful claim contest:

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My sure divinity shall bear the shield,

And edge thy sword to reap the glorious field.
Now, pay the debt to craving nature due,
Her faded powers with balmy rest renew."
She ceased, ambrosial slumbers seal his eyes;
His care dissolves in visionary joys:
The goddess, pleased, regains her natal skies.

Not so the queen: the downy bands of sleep
By grief relax'd, she waked again to weep:
A gloomy pause ensued of dumb despair;
Then thus her fate invoked with fervent prayer:
"Diana! speed thy deathful ebon dart,
And cure the pangs of this convulsive heart.
Snatch me, ye whirlwinds! far from human race,
Toss'd through the void illimitable space:
Or if dismounted from the rapid cloud,

Me with his whelming wave let Ocean shroud!
So, Pandarus, thy hopes, three orphan-fair,

Were doom'd to wander through the devious air;
Thyself untimely, and thy consort died,

But four celestials both your cares supplied.

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and while engaged in a trial of skill with the weapon which, sacred to him, was to deal death to themselves; with the very weapon, too, of the man they were outraging, and whose wife and plundered goods were the promised reward of the victor.

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'What, however, it may be asked, has induced the genius, who conceived this grand poetical moral, to shroud it under so enigmatical a veil? A sufficient answer to such questions might perhaps be, that we have no right to ask them. The following, however, suggests itself as a natural explanation of the mystery. The special patroness of Ulysses was Pallas. She had been his guardian angel during the Trojan war, and had conducted him safe through the dangers of his late adventurous course. To her, therefore, the first, and ostensibly the sole credit was to remain of completing the work she had begun. Had the agency of Apollo been brought forward in the prominent form to which its importance might otherwise seem to entitle it, Minerva would have been eclipsed, or a multiplicity of divine interference have resulted, injurious to the harmony of the action. The influence, therefore, of the god of the bow, with its train of portentous contingencies, has been very properly kept in the background of the picture. The few incidental touches by which it has been shadowed forth speak home, through their very obscurity, with the greater force, to the minds of those who appreciate the true spirit of the poem."-Vol. i. p. 385.