“O king! to mercy be thy soul inclined, And spare the poet’s ever-gentle kind. A deed like this thy future fame would wrong, For dear to gods and men is sacred song. Self-taught I sing; by Heaven, and Heaven alone, The genuine seeds of poesy are sown: And (what the gods bestow) the lofty lay To gods alone and godlike worth we pay. Save then the poet, and thyself reward! ’Tis thine to merit, mine is to record. That here I sung, was force, and not desire; This hand reluctant touch’d the warbling wire; And let thy son attest, nor sordid pay, Nor servile flattery, stain’d the moral lay.” The moving words Telemachus attends, His sire approaches, and the bard defends. “O mix not, father, with those impious dead The man divine! forbear that sacred head; Medon, the herald, too, our arms may spare, Medon, who made my infancy his care; If yet he breathes, permit thy son to give Thus much to gratitude, and bid him live.” Beneath a table, trembling with dismay, Couch’d close to earth, unhappy Medon lay, Wrapp’d in a new-slain ox’s ample hide; Swift at the word he cast his screen aside, Sprung to the prince, embraced his knee with tears, And thus with grateful voice address’d his ears “O prince! O friend! lo, here thy Medon stands Ah stop the hero’s unresisted hands, Incensed too justly by that impious brood, Whose guilty glories now are set in blood.” To whom Ulysses with a pleasing eye: “Be bold, on friendship and my son rely; Live, an example for the world to read, How much more safe the good than evil deed: Thou, with the heaven-taught bard, in peace resort From blood and carnage to yon open court: Me other work requires.” With timorous awe From the dire scene the exempted two withdraw, Scarce sure of life, look round, and trembling move To the bright altars of Protector Jove. Meanwhile Ulysses search’d the dome, to find If yet there live of all the offending kind. Not one! complete the bloody tale he found, All steep’d in blood, all gasping on the ground. So, when by hollow shores the fisher-train Sweep with their arching nets the roaring main, And scarce the meshy toils the copious draught contain, All naked of their element, and bare, The fishes pant, and gasp in thinner air; Wide o’er the sands are spread the stiffening prey, Till the warm sun exhales their soul away. And now the king commands his son to call Old Euryclea to the deathful hall: The son observant not a moment stays; The aged governess with speed obeys; The sounding portals instant they display; The matron moves, the prince directs the way. On heaps of death the stern Ulysses stood, All black with dust, and cover’d thick with blood. So the grim lion from the slaughter comes, Dreadful he glares, and terribly he foams, His breast with marks of carnage painted o’er, His jaws all dropping with the bull’s black gore.