High on the shore the growing hill we raise,
That wide the extended Hellespont surveys:
Where all from age to age, who pass the coast,
May point Achilles' tomb, and hail the mighty ghost.
Thetis herself to all our peers proclaims
Heroic prizes and exequial games;

The gods assented; and around thee lay

And show'd, as unperceived we took our stand, 170
The backward labours of her faithless hand.
Forced, she completes it; and before us lay
The mingled web whose gold and silver ray
Display'd the radiance of the night and day.
Just as she finish'd her illustrious toil,
Ill fortune led Ulysses to our isle.

Rich spoils and gifts that blazed against the day. 110 For in a lonely nook, beside the sea,

Oft have I seen with solemn funeral games
Heroes and kings committed to the flames;
But strength of youth, or valour of the brave,
With nobler contest ne'er renown'd a grave.
Such were the games by azure Thetis given,
And such thy honours, oh beloved of heaven!
Dear to mankind thy fame survives, nor fades
Its bloom eternal in the Stygian shades.
But what to me avail my honours gone,
Successful toils, and battles bravely won?
Doom'd by stern Jove at home to end my life,
By curst Egysthus, and a faithless wife!

At an old swine-herd's rural lodge he lay :
Thither his son from sandy Pyle repairs,
And speedy lands, and secretly confers.
They plan our future ruin, and resort
Confederate to the city and the court.
First came the son; the father next succeeds,
Clad like a beggar, whom Eumæus leads;
Propt on a staff, deform'd with age
and care,
And hung with rags that flutter'd in the air.
120 Who could Ulysses in that form behold?
Scorn'd by the young, forgotten by the old,"
Ill-used by all! to every wrong resign'd,
Patient he suffer'd with a constant mind.
But, when arising in his wrath to obey
The will of Jove, he gave the vengeance way:
The scatter'd arms that hung around the dome
Careful he treasured in a private room:

Then to her suitors bade his queen propose.
The archer's strife, the source of future woes,
130 And omen of our death! In vain we drew⚫

Thus they while Hermes o'er the dreary plain
Led the sad numbers by Ulysses slain.
On each majestic form they cast a view,
And timorous pass'd, and awfully withdrew.
But Agamemnon, through the gloomy shade,
His ancient host Amphimedon survey'd ;
Son of Melanthius! (he began) O say!
What cause compell'd so many, and so gay,
To tread the downward, melancholy way?
Say could one city yield a troop so fair?
Were all these partners of one native air?
Or did the rage of stormy Neptune sweep
Your lives at once, and whelm beneath the deep?
Did nightly thieves, or pirates' cruel hands,
Drench with your blood your pillaged country's
sands?

Or well defending some beleaguer'd wall,
Say, for the public did ye greatly fall?
Inform thy guest: for such I was of yore
When our triumphant navies touch'd your shore;
Forced a long month the wintry seas to bear,
To move the great Ulysses to the war,

O king of men! I faithful shall relate
(Replied Amphimedon) our hapless fate.
Ulysses absent our ambitious aim

With rival loves pursued his royal dame;
Her coy reserve, and prudence mix'd with pride,
Our common suit nor granted, nor denied;
But close with inward hate our deaths design'd;
Versed in all arts of wily womankind.
Her band, laborious, in delusion spread

180

The twanging string, and tried the stubborn yew
To none it yields but great Ulysses hands;
In vain we threat; Telemachus commands;
The bow he snatch'd and in an instant bent?
Through every ring the victor arrow went.
Fierce on the threshold then in arms he stood;
Pour'd forth the darts that thirsted for our blood,
And frown'd before us, dreadful as a god!
First bleeds Antinous: thick the shafts resound,
And heaps on heaps the wretches strew the ground:
140 This way, and that we turn, we fly, we fall;
Some god assisted, and unmanned us all :
Ignoble cries precede the dying groans;
And batter'd brains and blood besmear the stones.
Thus, great Atrides: thus Ulysses drove
The shades thou seest, from yon fair realms above
Our mangled bodies now deform'd with gore,
Cold and neglected, spread the marble floor: i
No friend to bathe our wounds! or tears to shed
O'er the pale corse! the honours of the dead.
O blest Ulysses! (thus the king express'd!
His sudden rapture) in thy consort bless'd!
Not more thy wisdom than her virtue shined
Not more thy patience than her constant mind.
Icarius' daughter, glory of the past,
And model to the future age, shall last:
The gods, to honour her fair fame shall raise
(Their great reward) a poet in her praise.
Not such, oh Tyndarus! thy daughter's deed,
By whose dire hand her king and husband bled;
160 Her shall the Muse to infamy prolong,

150

A spacious loom, and mix'd the various thread.
Ye peers (she cried) who press to gain my heart,
Where dead Ulysses claims no more a part,
Yet a short space your rival suit suspend,
Till this funereal web my labours end:
Cease, till to good Laërtes I bequeath
A task of grief, his ornaments of death:
Lest, when the Fates his royal ashes claim,
The Grecian matrons taint my spotless fame :
Should he, long honour'd with supreme command,
Want the last duty of a daughter's hand.

The fiction pleased, our generous train complies,
Nor fraud mistrusts in virtue's fair disguise.
The work she plied, but studious of delay,
Each following night reversed the toils of day.
Unheard, unseen, three years her arts prevail;
The fourth, her maid reveal'd the amazing tale,

Example dread, and theme of tragic song!
The general sex shall suffer in her shame,
And even the best that bears a woman's name.
Thus, in the regions of eternal shade,
Conferr'd the mournful phantoms of the dead;
While from the town, Ulysses and his band
Pass'd to Laërtes' cultivated land.
The ground himself had purchased with his pain,
And labour made the rugged soil a plain.

2:20

230

Now changed with time, with absence and with woe.
Then to his train he gives his spear and shield;
The house they enter; and he seeks the field,
Thro' rows of shade, with various fruitage crown'd,
The labour'd scenes of richest verdure round.
Nor aged Dolius, nor his sons were there,
Nor servants, absent on another care:
To search the woods for sets of flowery thorn,
The orchard bounds to strengthen and adorn.
But all alone the hoary king he found;

300

He ran, he seized him with a strict embrace,
With thousand kisses wander'd o'er his face-
I, I am he; oh father, rise! behold

380

Thy son, with twenty winters now grown old;
Thy son, so long desired, so long detain'd,
Restored, and breathing in his native land:
These floods of sorrow, oh my sire, restrain!
The vengeance is complete; the suitor-train,
Stretch'd in our palace, by these hands lie slain.
Amazed, Laërtes. Give some certain sign
(If such thou art) to manifest thee mine.
Lo, here the wound (he cries) received of yore,
The scar indented by the tusky boar,
When, by thyself, and by Anticlea sent,
To old Autolychus's realms I went.
Yet by another sign thy offspring know;
The several trees you gave me long ago,
While, yet a child, these fields I loved to trace,
And trod thy footsteps with unequal pace;
To every plant in order as we came,
Well-pleased, you told its nature and its name,
Whate'er my childish fancy ask'd, bestow'd;
Twelve pear-trees, bowing with their pendant load,
And ten, that red with blushing apples glow'd;
Full fifty purple figs; and many a row
of various vines that then began to blow.
A future vintage! when the Hours produce
Their latent buds, and Sol exalts the juice.

This arm had aided yours, this hand bestrown
Our floors with death and push'd the slaughter on;
Nor had the sire been separate from the son.

They communed thus; while homeward bent
their way

The swains, fatigued with labours of the day:
Dolius the first, the venerable man;

And next his sons, a long succeeding train,
For due refection to the bower they came,
Call'd by the careful old Sicilian dame,

Who nursed the children, and now tends the sire;
They see their lord, they gaze, and they admire. 451
On chairs and beds in order seated round,
They share the gladsome board; the roofs resound.
While thus Ulysses to his ancient friend:
Forbear your wonder, and the feast attend:
The rites have waited long. The chief commands
390 Their loves in vain; old Dolius spreads his hands,
Springs to his master with a warm embrace,
And fastens kisses on his hands and face;
Then thus broke out: Oh long, oh daily mourn'd!
Beyond our hopes, and to our wish return'd!
Conducted sure by Heaven! for Heaven alone
Could work this wonder: welcome to thy own!
And joys and happiness attend thy throne!
Who knows thy bless'd, thy wish'd return? oh say,
To the chaste queen shall we the news convey?
Or hears she, and with blessings loads the day?
Dismiss that care, for to the royal bride
Already is it known, (the king replied,

400

Smit with the signs which all his doubts explain,
His heart within him melts; his knees sustain
Their feeble weight no more: his arms alone
Support him, round the loved Ulysses thrown;
He faints, he sinks, with mighty joys oppress'd:
Ulysses clasps him to his eager breast.
Soon as returning life regains its seat,
And his breath lengthens, and his pulses beat;
Yes, I believe (he cries) almighty Jove!
Heaven rules as yet, and gods there are above.
'Tis so-the suitors for their wrongs have paid-
But what shall guard us, if the town invade?
If, while the news through every city flies,
All Ithaca and Cephalenia rise?

To this Ulysses: As the gods shall please
Be all the rest; and set thy soul at ease.
Haste to the cottage by this orchard's side,
And take the banquet which our cares provide:
There wait thy faithful band of rural friends,
And there the young Telemachus attends.

Thus having said, they traced the garden o'er,
And stooping enter'd at the lowly door.
The swains and young Telemachus they found,
The victim portion'd, and the goblet crown'd.
The hoary king, his old Sicilian maid
Perfumed and wash'd, and gorgeously array'd.
Pallas attending gives his frame to shine
With awful port, and majesty divine;
His gazing son admires the godlike grace
And air celestial dawning o'er his face.
What god, he cried, my father's form improves ?
How high he treads, and how enlarged he moves!
Oh! would to all the deathless powers on high,
Pallas and Jove, and him who rules the sky!
(Replied the king elated with his praise)
My strength were still, as once in better days
When the bold Cephalens the leaguer form'd,
And proud Nericus trembled as I storm'd.
Such were I now, not absent from your deed
When the last sun beheld the suitors bleed,

461

And straight resumed his seat;) while round him

Each faithful youth, and breathes out ardent vows:
Then all beneath their father take their place,
Rank'd by their ages, and the banquet grace.

Now flying Fame the swift report had spread
Through all the city, of the suitors dead.
410 In throngs they rise, and to the palace crowd;
Their sighs are many, and the tumult loud.
Weeping they bear the mangled heaps of slain,
Inhume the natives in their native plain,
The rest in ships are wafted o'er the main.
Then sad in council all the seniors sate,
Frequent and full, assembled to debate:
Amid the circle first Euphites rose,

Big was his eye with tears, his heart with woes:
The bold Antinous was his age's pride,

420

The first who by Ulysses' arrow died.

Down his wan cheek the trickling torrent ran,
As mixing words with sighs he thus began:

430

480

Great deeds, oh friends! this wondrous man has
wrought,

And mighty blessings to his country brought!
With ships he parted, and a numerous train,
Those, and their ships, he buried in the main.
Now he returns, and first essays his hand

In the best blood of all his native land.

Haste then, and ere to neighbouring Pyle he flies,
Or sacred Elis, to procure supplies;
Arise (or ye for ever fall) arise!

Shame to this age, and all that shall succeed,
If unrevenged your sons and brothers bleed.
Prove that we live, by vengeance on his head,
Or sink at once forgotten with the dead.

490

500

Here ceased he: but indignant tears let fall
Spoke when he ceased: dumb sorrow touch'd them all.
When from the palace to the wondering throng
440 Sage Medon came, and Phemius came along,

(Restless and early sleep's soft bands they broke ;)
And Medon first the assembled chiefs bespoke:
Hear me, ye peers and elders of the land,
Who deem this act the work of mortal hand;
As o'er the heaps of death Ulysses strode,
These eyes, these eyes, beheld a present god,
Who now before him, now beside him stood,
Fought as he fought, and mark'd his way with
blood;

In vain old Mentor's form the god belied;

570

Stood in the way, and at a glance beheld
The foe approach, embattled on the field.
With backward step he hastens to the bower,
And tells the news. They arm with all their power,
510 Four friends alone Ulysses' cause embrace,
And six were all the sons of Dolius' race:
Old Dolius too his rusted arms put on;
And, still more old, in arms Laërtes shone.
Trembling with warmth, the hoary heroes stand,
And brazen panoply invests the band.

Twas Heaven that struck, and Heaven was on his The opening gates at once their war display:

side.

A sudden horror all the assembly shook,
When, slowly rising, Halitherses spoke :

Reverend and wise, whose comprehensive view
At once the present and the future knew :)
Me too, ye fathers, hear! from you proceed
The ills ye mourn; your own the guilty deed.
Ye gave your sons, your lawless sons, the rein;
Oft warn'd by Mentor and myself in vain ;)
An absent hero's bed they sought to soil,
An absent hero's wealth they made their spoil;
Immoderate riot, and intemperate lust!
The offence was great, the punishment was just.
Weigh then my counsels in an equal scale,
Nor rush to ruin. Justice will prevail.

520

His moderate words some better minds persuade:
They part, and join him; but the number stay'd. 531
They storm, they shout, with hasty phrenzy fired,
And second all Eupithes' rage inspired.
They case their limbs in brass; to arms they run;
The broad effulgence blazes in the sun.
Before the city, and in ample plain,
They meet: Eupithes heads the frantic train.
Fierce for his son, he breathes his threats in air;
Fate hears them not, and Death attends him there.
This pass'd on earth; while in the realms above
Minerva thus to cloud-compelling Jove:
May I presume to search thy secret soul?
Oh Power supreme, oh Ruler of the whole!
Say, hast thou doom'd to this divided state
Or peaceful amity, or stern debate?
Declare thy purpose, for thy will is fate.

Is not thy thought my own? (the god replies
Who rolls the thunder o'er the vaulted skies ;)
Hath not long since thy knowing soul decreed,

580

Fierce they rush forth: Ulysses leads the way.
That moment joins them with celestial aid,
In Mentor's form, the Jove descended maid:
The suffering hero felt his patient breast
Swell with new joy, and thus his son address'd:
Behold, Telemachus! (nor fear the sight,)
The brave embattled, the grim front of fight!
The valiant with the valiant must contend:
Shame not the line whence glorious you descend.
Wide o'er the world their martial fame was spread;
Regard thyself, the living and the dead.

Thy eyes, great father! on this battle cast, 590
Shall learn from me Penelope was chaste.

So spoke Telemachus! the gallant boy
Good old Laërtes heard with panting joy;
And bless'd! thrice bless'd this happy day he cries,
The day that shows me, ere I close my eyes,
A son and grandson of the Arcesian name
Strive for fair virtue, and contest for fame!
Then thus Minerva in Laërtes' ear:

Son of Arcesius, reverend warrior, hear!
Jove and Jove's daughter first implore in prayer, 600
Then, whirling high, discharge thy lance in air.
She said, infusing courage with the word.
Jove and Jove's daughter then the chief implored,
And, whirling high, dismiss'd the lance in air,
541 Full at Eupithes drove the deathful spear:

The brass-cheek'd helmet opens to the wound;
He falls, earth thunders, and his arms resound.
Before the father and the conquering son
Heaps rush on heaps, they fight, they drop, they run.
Now by the sword, and now the javelin fall
The rebel race, and death had swallow'd all;
But from on high the blue-eyed virgin cried;
Her awful voice detain'd the headlong tide:

The chief's return should make the guilty bleed? 550 Forbear, ye nations, your mad hands forbear

'Tis done, and at thy will the Fates succeed.
Yet hear the issue: since Ulysses' hand

Has slain the suitors, Heaven shall bless the land.
None now the kindred of the unjust shall own;
Forgot the slaughter'd brother and the son:
Each future day increase of wealth shall bring,
And o'er the past Oblivion stretch her wing.
Long shall Ulysses in his empire rest,
His people blessing, by his people bless'd:
Let all be peace.-He said, and gave the nod
That binds the Fates; the sanction of the god:
And prompt to execute the eternal will,
Descended Pallas from the Olympian hill.
Now sat Ulysses at the rural feast,
The rage of hunger and of thirst repress'd:
To watch the foe a trusty spy he sent :
A son of Dolius on the message went,
30

From mutual slaughter: Peace descends to spare.
Fear shook the nations: at the voice divine
They drop their javelins, and their rage resign.
All scatter'd round their glittering weapons lie;
Some fall to earth, and some confusedly fly.
With dreadful shouts Ulysses pour'd along,
Swift as an eagle, as an eagle strong.
But Jove's red arm the burning thunder aims;
Before Minerva shot the livid flames;

560 Blazing they fell, and at her feet expired;
Then stopp'd the goddess, trembled, and retired.
Descended from the gods! Ulysses, cease;
Offend not Jove: obey, and give the peace.

So Pallas spoke: the mandate from above
The king obey'd. The virgin-seed of Jove,
In Mentor's form, confirm'd the full accord,
And willing nations knew their lawful lord.

610

620

630

END OF THE ODYSSEY.

POSTSCRIPT.

BY MR. POPE.

I CANNOT dismiss this work without a few observations on the character and style of it. Whoever reads the Odyssey with an eye to the Iliad, expecting to find it of the same character or of the same sort of spirit, will be grievously deceived, and err against the first principles of criticism, which is, to consider the nature of the piece, and the intent of its author. The Odyssey is a moral and political work, instructive to all degrees of men, and filled with images, examples, and precepts of civil and domestic life. Homer is here a person,

Qui didicit, patriæ quid debeat, et quid amicis.
Quo sit amore parens, quo frater aman lus, et hospes:
Qui quid sit pulchrum, quid turpe, quid utile, quid non,
Plenius et melius Chrysippo et Crantore dicit.

painting the manners. This Homer has done in characterising the suitors, and describing their way of life; which is properly a branch of comedy, whose particular business it is to represent the manners of men.'

We must first observe, it is the sublime of which Longinus is writing: that, and not the nature of Homer's poem, is his subject. After having highly extolled the sublimity and fire of the Iliad, he justly observes the Odyssey to have less of those qualities, and to turn more on the side of moral, and reflections on human life. Nor is it his business here to determine, whether the elevated spirit of the one, or the just moral of the other, be the greater excellence

in itself.

Secondly, the fire and fury of which he is speaking, cannot well be meant of the general spirit and inspiration which is to run through a whole epic poem, but of that particular warmth and impetuosity necessary in some parts, to image or represent actions or The Odyssey is the reverse of the Iliad, in moral, passions, of haste, tumult and violence. It is on ocsubject, manner, and style; to which it has no sort casion of citing some such particular passages in of relation, but as the story happens to follow in Homer, that Longinus breaks into this reflection; order of time, and as some of the same persons are which seems to determine his meaning chiefly to that actors in it. Yet from this incidental connexion sense.

many have been misled to regard it as a contination or second part, and thence to expect a purity of character inconsistent with its nature.

Upon the whole, he affirms the Odyssey to have less sublimity and fire than the Iliad, but he does not say it wants the sublime or wants fire. He affirms it It is no wonder that the common reader should fall to be a narrative, but not that the narration is defecinto this mistake, when so great a critic as Longinus tive. He affirms it to abound in fictions, not that seems not wholly free from it; although what he has those fictions are ill invented, or ill executed. He said has been generally understood to import a severer censure of the Odyssey than it really does, if we consider the occasion on which it is introduced, and the circumstances to which it is confined.

affirms it to be nice and particular in painting the manners, but not that those manners are ill painted. If Homer has fully in these points accomplished his own design, and done all that the nature of his poem demanded or allowed, it still remained perfect in its kind, and as much a master-piece as the Iliad.

"The Odyssey (says he) is an instance how natural it is to a great genius, when it begins to grow old and decline, to delight itself in narrations and fables. For The amount of the passage is this: that in his own that Homer composed the Odyssey after the Iliad, particular taste, and with respect to the sublime, Lonmany proofs may be given,' &c. 'From hence, in my ginus preferred the Iliad: and because the Odyssey judgment, it proceeds, that as the Iliad was written was less active and lofty, he judged it the work of the while his spirit was in its greatest vigour, the whole old age of Homer.

structure of that work is dramatic and full of action; If this opinion be true, it will only prove, that whereas the greater part of the Odyssey is employed Homer's age might determine him in the choice of in narration, which is the taste of old age: so that in his subject, not that it affected him in the execution this latter piece we may compare him to the setting of it; and that which would be a very wrong instance sun, which has still the same greatness, but not the to prove the decay of his imagination, is a very good same ardour or force. He speaks not in the same one to evince the strength of his judgment. For had strain; we see no more that sublime of the Iliad, he (as Madam Dacier observes) composed the Odyswhich marches on with a constant pace, without sey in his youth, and the Iliad in his age, both must ever being stopped or retarded: there appears no in reason have been exactly the same as they now more that hurry, and that strong tide of motions and stand. To blame Homer for his choice of such a passions, pouring one after another: there is no more subject, as did not admit the same incidents and the he same fury, or the same volubility of diction, so same pomp of style as his former, is to take offence suitable to action, and all along drawing in such in- at too much variety, and to imagine, that when a man numerable images of nature. But Homer, like the has written one good thing, he must ever after only ocean, is always great, even when he ebbs and re- copy himself. tires; even when he is lowest, and loses himself most The Battle of Constantine, and the School of in narrations and incredible fictions: as instances of Athens, are both pieces of Raphael: shall we censure this, we cannot forget the descriptions of tempests, the School of Athens as faulty, because it has not l'e the adventures of Ulysses with the Cyclops, and fury and fire of the other? or shall we say that Kamany others. But though all this be age, it is the age phael was grown grave and old, because he chose to of Homer. And it may be said for the credit of represent the manners of old men and philosophers? these fictions, that they are beautiful dreams, or if There is all the silence, tranquillity, and composure you will, the dreams of Jupiter himself. I spoke of in the one, and all the warmth, hurry, and tumult in the Odyssey, only to show that the greatest poets, the other, which the subject of either required: both when their genius wants strength and warmth for the of them had been imperfect, if they had not been as pathetic, for the most part employ themselves in they are. And let the painter or poet be young of