He not venturing (for delicacy) to approach and clasp her knees, as suppliants should, but standing far off, addressed this speech to the young princess: 

“Before I presume rudely to press my petitions, I should first ask whether I am addressing a mortal woman, or one of the goddesses.  If a goddess, you seem to me to be likest to Diana, the chaste huntress, the daughter of Jove.  Like hers are your lineaments, your stature, your features, and air divine.”

She making answer that she was no goddess, but a mortal maid, he continued: 

“If a woman, thrice blessed are both the authors of your birth, thrice blessed are your brothers, who even to rapture must have joy in your perfections, to see you grown so like a young tree, and so graceful.  But most blessed of all that breathe is he that has the gift to engage your young neck in the yoke of marriage.  I never saw that man that was worthy of you.  I never saw man or woman that at all parts equalled you.  Lately at Delos (where I touched) I saw a young palm which grew beside Apollo’s temple; it exceeded all the trees which ever I beheld for straitness and beauty:  I can compare you only to that.  A stupor past admiration strikes me, joined with fear, which keeps me back from approaching you, to embrace your knees.  Nor is it strange; for one of freshest and firmest spirit would falter, approaching near to so bright an object:  but I am one whom a cruel habit of calamity has prepared to receive strong impressions.  Twenty days the unrelenting seas have tossed me up and down coming from Ogygia, and at length cast me ship-wrecked last night upon your coast.  I have seen no man or woman since I landed but yourself.  All that I crave is clothes, which you may spare me, and to be shown the way to some neighbouring town.  The gods, who have care of strangers, will requite you for these courtesies.”

She admiring to hear such complimentary words proceed out of the mouth of one whose outside looked so rough and unpromising, made answer:  “Stranger, I discern neither sloth nor folly in you, and yet I see that you are poor and wretched:  from which I gather that neither wisdom nor industry can secure felicity; only Jove bestows it upon whomsoever he pleases.  He perhaps has reduced you to this plight.  However, since your wanderings have brought you so near to our city, it lies in our duty to supply your wants.  Clothes and what else a human hand should give to one so suppliant, and so tamed with calamity, you shall not want.  We will shew you our city and tell you the name of our people.  This is the land of the Phaeacians, of which my father Alcinous is king.”

Then calling her attendants who had dispersed on the first sight of Ulysses, she rebuked them for their fear, and said:  “This man is no Cyclop, nor monster of sea or land, that you should fear him; but he seems manly, staid, and discreet, and though decayed in his outward appearance, yet he has the mind’s riches, wit and fortitude, in abundance.  Show him the cisterns where he may wash him from the sea-weeds and foam that hang about him, and let him have garments that fit him out of those which we have brought with us to the cisterns.”