To bless our safe return, we join in prayer; But angry Jove dispersed our vows in air, And raised new discord. Then (so Heaven decreed) Ulysses first and Nestor disagreed! Wise as he was, by various counsels sway’d, He there, though late, to please the monarch, stay’d. But I, determined, stem the foamy floods, Warn’d of the coming fury of the gods. With us, Tydides fear’d, and urged his haste: And Menelaus came, but came the last, He join’d our vessels in the Lesbian bay, While yet we doubted of our watery way; If to the right to urge the pilot’s toil (The safer road), beside the Psyrian isle; Or the straight course to rocky Chios plough, And anchor under Mimas’ shaggy brow? We sought direction of the power divine: The god propitious gave the guiding sign; Through the mid seas he bid our navy steer, And in Euboea shun the woes we fear. The whistling winds already waked the sky; Before the whistling winds the vessels fly, With rapid swiftness cut the liquid way, And reach Gerestus at the point of day. There hecatombs of bulls, to Neptune slain, High-flaming please the monarch of the main. The fourth day shone, when all their labours o’er, Tydides’ vessels touched the wish’d-for shore. But I to Pylos scud before the gales, The god still breathing on my swelling sails; Separate from all, I safely landed here; Their fates or fortunes never reach’d my ear. Yet what I learn’d, attend; as here I sat, And ask’d each voyager each hero’s fate; Curious to know, and willing to relate. “Safe reach’d the Myrmidons their native land, Beneath Achilles’ warlike son’s command. Those, whom the heir of great Apollo’s art, Brave Philoctetes, taught to wing the dart; And those whom Idomen from Ilion’s plain Had led, securely cross’d the dreadful main How Agamemnon touch’d his Argive coast, And how his life by fraud and force he lost, And how the murderer, paid his forfeit breath; What lands so distant from that scene of death But trembling heard the fame? and heard, admire. How well the son appeased his slaughter’d sire! Ev’n to the unhappy, that unjustly bleed, Heaven gives posterity, to avenge the deed. So fell Ægysthus; and mayest thou, my friend, (On whom the virtues of thy sire descend,) Make future times thy equal act adore, And be what brave Orestes was before!”