The Daily Odyssey: April 10
The assembled peers with general praise approved
His pleaded reason, and the suit he moved.
Each drinks a full oblivion of his cares,
And to the gifts of balmy sleep repairs,
Ulysses in the regal walls alone
Remain’d: beside him, on a splendid throne,
Divine Arete and Alcinous shone.
The queen, on nearer view, the guest survey’d,
Rob’d in the garments her own hands had made,
Not without wonder seen. Then thus began,
Her words addressing to the godlike man:
“Camest thou hither, wondrous stranger! say,
From lands remote and o’er a length of sea?
Tell, then, whence art thou? whence, that princely air?
And robes like these, so recent and so fair?”
“Hard is the task, O princess! you impose
(Thus sighing spoke the man of many woes),
The long, the mournful series to relate
Of all my sorrows sent by Heaven and Fate!
Yet what you ask, attend. An island lies
Beyond these tracts, and under other skies,
Ogygia named, in Ocean’s watery arms;
Where dwells Calypso, dreadful in her charms!
Remote from gods or men she holds her reign,
Amid the terrors of a rolling main.
Me, only me, the hand of fortune bore,
Unblest! to tread that interdicted shore:
When Jove tremendous in the sable deeps
Launch’d his red lightning at our scattered ships;
Then, all my fleet and all my followers lost.
Sole on a plank on boiling surges toss’d,
Heaven drove my wreck the Ogygian Isle to find,
Full nine days floating to the wave and wind.
Met by the goddess there with open arms,
She bribed my stay with more than human charms;
Nay, promised, vainly promised, to bestow
Immortal life, exempt from age and woe;
But all her blandishments successless prove,
To banish from my breast my country’s love.
I stay reluctant seven continued years,
And water her ambrosial couch with tears,