“I come,” said he, “to hear, if any fame Breath’d of my father to thy notice came. My house is sack’d, my fat works of the field Are all destroy’d; my house doth nothing yield But enemies, that kill my harmless sheep, And sinewy oxen, nor will ever keep Their steels without them. And these men are they That woo my mother, most inhumanly Committing injury on injury. To thy knees therefore I am come, t’ attend Relation of the sad and wretched end My erring father felt, if witness’d by Your own eyes, or the certain news that fly From others’ knowledges. For, more than is The usual heap of human miseries, His mother bore him to. Vouchsafe me then, Without all ruth of what I can sustain, The plain and simple truth of all you know. Let me beseech so much, if ever vow Was made, and put in good effect to you, At Troy, where suff’rance bred you so much smart, Upon my father good Ulysses’ part, And quit it now to me (himself in youth) Unfolding only the uncloséd truth.” He, deeply sighing, answer’d him: “O shame, That such poor vassals should affect the fame To share the joys of such a worthy’s bed! As when a hind, her calves late farrowéd, To give suck, enters the bold lion’s den, He roots of hills and herby vallies then For food (there feeding) hunting; but at length Returning to his cavern, gives his strength The lives of both the mother and her brood In deaths indecent; so the Wooers’ blood Must pay Ulysses’ pow’rs as sharp an end. O would to Jove, Apollo, and thy friend The wise Minerva, that thy father were As once he was, when he his spirits did rear Against Philomelides, in a fight Perform’d in well-built Lesbos, where, down-right He strook the earth with him, and gat a shout Of all the Grecians! O, if now full out He were as then, and with the Wooers coped, Short-liv’d they all were, and their nuptials hoped Would prove as desp’rate. But, for thy demand Enforc’d with pray’rs, I’ll let thee understand The truth directly, nor decline a thought, Much less deceive, or sooth thy search in ought; But what the old and still-true-spoken God, That from the sea breathes oracles abroad, Disclos’d to me, to thee I’ll all impart, Nor hide one word from thy sollicitous heart. I was in Ægypt, where a mighty time The Gods detain’d me, though my natural clime I never so desir’d, because their homes I did not greet with perfect hecatombs. For they will put men evermore in mind, How much their masterly commandments bind.