To be our sea-mark) we assay’d the waves. The business, I must tell, our own good craves, And not the public. I am come t’ enquire, If, in the fame that best men doth inspire Of my most-suff’ring father, I may hear Some truth of his estate now, who did bear The name, being join’d in fight with you alone, To even with earth the height of Ilion. Of all men else, that any name did bear, And fought for Troy, the sev’ral ends we hear; But his death Jove keeps from the world unknown, The certain fame thereof being told by none; If on the continent by enemies slain, Or with the waves eat of the ravenous main. For his love ’tis that to your knees I sue, That you would please, out of your own clear view, T’ assure his sad end; or say, if your ear Hath heard of the unhappy wanderer, To too much sorrow whom his mother bore. You then by all your bounties I implore, (If ever to you deed or word hath stood, By my good father promis’d, render’d good Amongst the Trojans, where ye both have tried The Grecian suff’rance) that in nought applied To my respect or pity you will glose, But uncloth’d truth to my desires disclose.” “O my much-lov’d,” said he, “since you renew Remembrance of the miseries that grew Upon our still-in-strength-opposing Greece Amongst Troy’s people, I must touch a piece Of all our woes there, either in the men Achilles brought by sea and led to gain About the country, or in us that fought About the city, where to death were brought All our chief men, as many as were there. There Mars-like Ajax lies; Achilles there; There the in-counsel-like-the-Gods, his friend; There my dear son Antilochus took end, Past measure swift of foot, and staid in fight. A number more that ills felt infinite; Of which to reckon all, what mortal man, If five or six years you should stay here, can Serve such enquiry? You would back again, Affected with unsufferable pain, Before you heard it. Nine years sieg’d we them, With all the depth and sleight of stratagem That could be thought. Ill knit to ill past end. Yet still they toil’d us; nor would yet Jove send Rest to our labours, nor will scarcely yet. But no man liv’d, that would in public set His wisdom by Ulysses’ policy, As thought his equal; so excessively He stood superior all ways. If you be His son indeed, mine eyes ev’n ravish me To admiration. And in all consent Your speech puts on his speech’s ornament. Nor would one say, that one so young could use, Unless his son, a rhetoric so profuse. And while we liv’d together, he and I Never in speech maintain’d diversity; Nor sat in council but, by one soul led, With spirit and prudent counsel furnishéd The Greeks at all hours, that, with fairest course, What best became them, they might put in force. But when Troy’s’ high tow’rs we had levell’d thus, We put to sea, and God divided us. And then did Jove our sad retreat devise; For all the Greeks were neither just nor wise, And therefore many felt so sharp a fate, Sent from Minerva’s most pernicious hate;