To guard her honour endless schemes contrived: She, only shielded by her stripling son, Her lord Ulysses long to Ilion gone, Each bold attempt of suitor-kings repell’d, And undefiled her nuptial contract held; True to her vows, and resolutely chaste, Met arts with art, and triumphed at the last. Argos, in Greece forgotten and unknown, Still seems her cruel fortune to bemoan: Argos, whose monarch led the Grecian hosts Across th’ Ægean main to Dardan coasts: Unhappy prince! who, on a hostile shore, Fatigue, and danger, ten long winters bore; And when to native realms restored at last To reap the harvest of thy labours past, There found a perjured friend, and faithless wife, Who sacrificed to impious lust thy life: Fast by Arcadia stretch these desert plains, And o’er the land a gloomy tyrant reigns. Next Macronisi is adjacent seen, Where adverse winds detained the Spartan queen; For whom, in arms combined, the Grecian host, With vengeance fired, invaded Phrygia’s coast; For whom so long they laboured to destroy The lofty turrets of imperial Troy; Here driven by Juno’s rage, the hapless dame, Forlorn of heart, from ruined Ilion came; The port an image bears of Parian stone, Of ancient fabric, but of date unknown. Due east from this appears th’ immortal shore That sacred Phœbus, and Diana bore, Delos! through all th’ Ægean seas renown’d, Whose coast the rocky Cyclades surround; By Phœbus honoured, and by Greece revered, Her hallowed groves e’en distant Persia feared: But now a desert unfrequented land, No human footstep marks the trackless sand. Thence to the north by Asia’s western bound Fair Lemnos stands, with rising marble crown’d; Where, in her rage, avenging Juno hurl’d Ill-fated Vulcan from th’ ethereal world: There his eternal anvils first he reared; Then, forged by Cyclopean art, appeared Thunders that shook the skies with dire alarms, And formed by skill divine, immortal arms; There, with this crippled wretch, the foul disgrace And living scandal of th’ empyreal race, In wedlock lived the beauteous Queen of Love; Can such sensations heavenly bosoms move! Eastward of this appears the Dardan shore, That once th’ imperial towers of Ilium bore, Illustrious Troy! renowned in every clime Through the long records of succeeding time; Who saw protecting gods from heaven descend Full oft thy royal bulwarks to defend: Though chiefs unnumbered in her cause were slain, With Fate the gods, and heroes, fought in vain! That refuge of perfidious Helen’s shame, At midnight was involved in Grecian flame; And now, by Time’s deep ploughshare harrowed o’er, The seat of sacred Troy is found no more: No trace of her proud fabrics now remains, But corn, and vines, enrich her cultured plains;