Nine years in the contention, is with thee. For in the tenth year, when roy victory Was won to give the Greeks the spoil of Troy, Return they did profess, but not enjoy, Since Pallas they incens’d, and she the waves By all the winds’ pow’r, that blew ope their graves. And there they rested. Only this poor one This coast both winds and waves have cast upon; Whom now forthwith he wills thee to dismiss, Affirming that th’ unalter’d Destinies Not only have decreed he shall not die Apart his friends, but of necessity Enjoy their sights before those fatal hours, His country earth reach, and erected tow’rs.” This struck a love-check’d horror through her pow’rs, When, naming him, she this reply did give: “Insatiate are ye Gods, past all that live, In all things you affect; which still converts Your pow’rs to envies. It afflicts your hearts, That any Goddess should, as you obtain The use of earthly dames, enjoy the men, And most in open marriage. So ye far’d, When the delicious-finger’d Morning shar’d Orion’s bed; you easy-living States Could never satisfy your emulous hates, Till in Ortygia the precise-liv’d Dame, Gold-thron’d Diana, on him rudely came, And with her swift shafts slew him. And such pains, When rich-hair’d Ceres pleas’d to give the reins To her affections, and the grace did yield Of love and bed, amidst a three-cropp’d field, To her Iasion, he paid angry Jove, Who lost no long time notice of their love, But with a glowing lightning was his death. And now your envies labour underneath A mortal’s choice of mine; whose life I took To lib’ral safety, when his ship Jove strook, With red-hot flashes, piece-meal in the seas, And all his friends and soldiers succourless Perish’d but he. Him, cast upon this coast With blasts and billows, I, in life giv’n lost, Preserv’d alone, lov’d, nourish’d, and did vow To make him deathless, and yet never grow Crooked, or worn with age, his whole life long. But since no reason may be made so strong To strive with Jove’s will, or to make it vain, No not if all the other Gods should strain Their pow’rs against it, let his will be law, So he afford him fit means to withdraw, As he commands him, to the raging main. But means from me he never shall obtain, For my means yield nor men, nor ship, nor oars, To set him off from my so envied shores. But if my counsel and good will can aid His safe pass home, my best shall be assay’d.” “Vouchsafe it so,” said heav’n’s ambassador, “And deign it quickly. By all means abhor T’ incense Jove’s wrath against thee, that with grace He may hereafter all thy wish embrace.” Thus took the Argus-killing God his wings. And since the rev’rend Nymph these awful things Receiv’d from Jove, she to Ulysses went; Whom she ashore found, drown’d in discontent, His eyes kept never dry he did so mourn, And waste his dear age for his wish’d return; Which still without the cave he us’d to do, Because he could not please the Goddess so, At night yet, forc’d, together took their rest,