To whom the prince:  “This night with joy I stay
O monarch great in virtue as in sway! 
If thou the circling year my stay control,
To raise a bounty noble as thy soul;
The circling year I wait, with ampler stores
And fitter pomp to hail my native shores: 
Then by my realms due homage would be paid;
For wealthy kings are loyally obeyed!”

“O king! for such thou art, and sure thy blood
Through veins (he cried) of royal fathers flow’d: 
Unlike those vagrants who on falsehood live,
Skill’d in smooth tales, and artful to deceive;
Thy better soul abhors the liar’s part,
Wise is thy voice, and noble is thy heart. 
Thy words like music every breast control,
Steal through the ear, and win upon the soul;
soft, as some song divine, thy story flows,
Nor better could the Muse record thy woes.

“But say, upon the dark and dismal coast,
Saw’st thou the worthies of the Grecian host? 
The godlike leaders who, in battle slain,
Fell before Troy, and nobly press’d the plain? 
And lo! a length of night behind remains,
The evening stars still mount the ethereal plains. 
Thy tale with raptures I could hear thee tell,
Thy woes on earth, the wondrous scenes in hell,
Till in the vault of heaven the stars decay. 
And the sky reddens with the rising day.”

“O worthy of the power the gods assign’d
(Ulysses thus replies), a king in mind: 
Since yet the early hour of night allows
Time for discourse, and time for soft repose,
If scenes of misery can entertain,
Woes I unfold, of woes a dismal train. 
Prepare to heir of murder and of blood;
Of godlike heroes who uninjured stood
Amidst a war of spears in foreign lands,
Yet bled at home, and bled by female hands.

“Now summon’d Proserpine to hell’s black hall
The heroine shades:  they vanish’d at her call. 
When lo! advanced the forms of heroes slain
By stern AEgysthus, a majestic train: 
And, high above the rest Atrides press’d the plain. 
He quaff’d the gore; and straight his soldier knew,
And from his eyes pour’d down the tender dew: 
His arms he stretch’d; his arms the touch deceive,
Nor in the fond embrace, embraces give: 
His substance vanish’d, and his strength decay’d,
Now all Atrides is an empty shade.

“Moved at the sight, I for a apace resign’d
To soft affliction all my manly mind;
At last with tears:  ’O what relentless doom,
Imperial phantom, bow’d thee to the tomb? 
Say while the sea, and while the tempest raves,
Has Fate oppress’d thee in the roaring waves,
Or nobly seized thee in the dire alarms
Of war and slaughter, and the clash of arms?’