Look how from his den A mountain lion looks, that, all embrued With drops of trees, and weather-beaten-hued, Bold of his strength, goes on, and in his eye A burning furnace glows, all bent to prey On sheep, or oxen, or the upland hart, His belly charging him, and he must part Stakes with the herdsman in his beasts’ attempt, Ev’n where from rape their strengths are most exempt; So wet, so weather-beat, so stung with need, Ev’n to the home-fields of the country’s breed Ulysses was to force forth his access, Though merely naked; and his sight did press The eyes of soft-hair’d virgins. Horrid was His rough appearance to them; the hard pass He had at sea stuck by him. All in flight The virgins scatter’d, frighted with this sight, About the prominent windings of the flood. All but Nausicaa fled; but she fast stood, Pallas had put a boldness in her breast, And in her fair limbs tender fear comprest. And still she stood him, as resolv’d to know What man he was, or out of what should grow His strange repair to them. And here was he Put to his wisdom; if her virgin knee He should be bold, but kneeling, to embrace, Or keep aloof, and try with words of grace, In humblest suppliance, if he might obtain Some cover for his nakedness, and gain Her grace to show and guide him to the town. The last he best thought, to be worth his own, In weighing both well; to keep still aloof, And give with soft words his desires their proof, Lest, pressing so near as to touch her knee, He might incense her maiden modesty. This fair and fil’d speech then shew’d this was he: “Let me beseech, O queen, this truth of thee, Are you of mortal, or the defied, race? If of the Gods, that th’ ample heav’ns embrace, I can resemble you to none above So near as to the chaste-born birth of Jove, The beamy Cynthia. Her you full present, In grace of ev’ry God-like lineament, Her goodly magnitude, and all th’ address You promise of her very perfectness. If sprung of humans, that inhabit earth, Thrice blest are both the authors of your birth, Thrice blest your brothers, that in your deserts Must, ev’n to rapture, bear delighted hearts, To see, so like the first trim of a tree, Your form adorn a dance. But most blest he, Of all that breathe, that hath the gift t’ engage Your bright neck in the yoke of marriage, And deck his house with your commanding merit I have not seen a man of so much spirit, Nor man, nor woman, I did ever see, At all parts equal to the parts in thee. T’ enjoy your sight, doth admiration seize My eyes, and apprehensive faculties. Lately in Delos (with a charge of men Arriv’d, that render’d me most wretched then, Now making me thus naked) I beheld The burthen of a palm, whose issue swell’d About Apollo’s fane, and that put on A grace like thee; for Earth had never none Of all her sylvan issue so adorn’d. Into amaze my very soul was turn’d, To give it observation; as now thee To view, O virgin, a stupidity Past admiration strikes me, join’d with fear