“My queen, my consort! through a length of years We drank the cup of sorrow mix’d with tears; Thou, for thy lord; while me the immortal powers Detain’d reluctant from my native shores. Now, bless’d again by Heaven, the queen display, And rule our palace with an equal sway. Be it my care, by loans, or martial toils, To throng my empty folds with gifts or spoils. But now I haste to bless Laertes’ eyes With sight of his Ulysses ere he dies; The good old man, to wasting woes a prey, Weeps a sad life in solitude away. But hear, though wise! This morning shall unfold The deathful scene, on heroes heroes roll’d. Thou with thy maids within the palace stay, From all the scene of tumult far away!” He spoke, and sheathed in arms incessant flies To wake his son, and bid his friends arise. “To arms!” aloud he cries; his friends obey, With glittering arms their manly limbs array, And pass the city gate; Ulysses leads the way. Now flames the rosy dawn, but Pallas shrouds The latent warriors in a veil of clouds. BOOK XXIV. ARGUMENT. The souls of the suitors are conducted by Mercury to the infernal shades. Ulysses in the country goes to the retirement of his father, Laertes; he finds him busied in his garden all alone; the manner of his discovery to him is beautifully described. They return together to his lodge, and the king is acknowledged by Dolius and the servants. The Ithacensians, led by Eupithes, the father of Antinous, rise against Ulysses, who gives them battle in which Eupithes is killed by Laertes: and the goddess Pallas makes a lasting peace between Ulysses and his subjects, which concludes the Odyssey. Cyllenius now to Pluto’s dreary reign Conveys the dead, a lamentable train! The golden wand, that causes sleep to fly, Or in soft slumber seals the wakeful eye, That drives the ghosts to realms of night or day, Points out the long uncomfortable way. Trembling the spectres glide, and plaintive vent Thin, hollow screams, along the deep descent. As in the cavern of some rifted den, Where flock nocturnal bats, and birds obscene; Cluster’d they hang, till at some sudden shock They move, and murmurs run through all the rock! So cowering fled the sable heaps of ghosts, And such a scream fill’d all the dismal coasts. And now they reach’d the earth’s remotest ends, And now the gates where evening Sol descends, And Leucas’ rock, and Ocean’s utmost streams, And now pervade the dusky land of dreams, And rest at last, where souls unbodied dwell In ever-flowing meads of asphodel. The empty forms of men inhabit there, Impassive semblance, images of air! Naught else are all that shined on earth before: Ajax and great Achilles are no more! Yet still a master ghost, the rest he awed, The rest adored him, towering as he trod; Still at his side is Nestor’s son survey’d, And loved Patroclus still attends his shade.