He said, the time would come, When Neptune, for our safe conducting home All sorts of strangers, out of envy fir’d, Would meet our fairest ship as she retir’d, And all the goodly shape and speed we boast Should like a mountain stand before us lost Amids the moving waters; which we see Perform’d in full end to our prophecy. Hear then my counsel, and obey me then: Renounce henceforth our convoy home of men, Whoever shall hereafter greet our town; And to th’ offended Deity’s renown Twelve chosen oxen let us sacred make, That he may pity us, and from us take This shady mountain.” They, in fear, obey’d, Slew all the beeves, and to the Godhead pray’d, The dukes and princes all ensphering round The sacred altar; while whose tops were crown’d, Divine Ulysses, on his country’s breast Laid bound in sleep, now rose out of his rest, Nor (being so long remov’d) the region knew. Besides which absence yet, Minerva threw A cloud about him, to make strange the more His safe arrival, lest upon his shore He should make known his face, and utter all That might prevent th’ event that was to fall. Which she prepar’d so well, that not his wife, Presented to him, should perceive his life, No citizen, no friend, till righteous fate Upon the Wooer’s wrongs were consummate. Through which cloud all things show’d now to the king Of foreign fashion; the enflow’réd spring Amongst the trees there, the perpetual waves, The rocks, that did more high their foreheads raise To his wrapt eye than naturally they did, And all the haven, in which a man seem’d hid From wind and weather, when storms loudest chid. He therefore, being risen, stood and view’d His country-earth; which, not perceiv’d, he rued, And, striking with his hurl’d-down hands his thighs, He mourn’d, and said: “O me! Again where lies My desert way? To wrongful men and rude, And with no laws of human right endued? Or are they human, and of holy minds? What fits my deed with these so many kinds Of goods late giv’n? What with myself will floods And errors do? I would to God, these goods Had rested with their owners, and that I Had fall’n on kings of more regality, To grace out my return, that lov’d indeed, And would have giv’n me consorts of fit speed To my distresses’ ending! But, as now All knowledge flies me where I may bestow My labour’d purchase, here they shall not stay, Lest what I car’d for others make their prey. O Gods! I see the great Phæacians then Were not all just and understanding men, That land me elsewhere than their vaunts pretended, Assuring me my country should see ended My miseries told them, yet now eat their vaunts. O Jove! Great Guardian of poor suppliants, That others sees, and notes too, shutting in All in thy plagues that most presume on sin, Revenge me on them. Let me number now The goods they gave, to give my mind to know If they have stol’n none in their close retreat.” The goodly caldrons then, and tripods, set In sev’ral ranks from out the heap, he told,